Pakistan Has "DNA of Terrorism": India's Reply on Kashmir at UNESCO

Paris, Nov 15: Pakistan has a "deep-rooted DNA of terrorism", India said in a sharp reply to Pakistan on Jammu and Kashmir at a UN meet in France on Thursday, asserting that the cash-strapped nation's "neurotic behavior" had resulted in its decline to a nearly failed state. The country had "all shades of darkness," said India at the UNESCO General Conference in Paris.

"Pakistan's neurotic behaviour has resulted in its decline to a nearly failed state with its weak economy, radicalised society and deep-rooted DNA of terrorism," said Ananya Agarwal, who led the Indian delegation to the UNESCO meet.

Pakistan is home to all shades of darkness, from extremist ideologies and darker powers of radicalisation to the darkest manifestations of terrorism, she told the panel.

"We condemn Pakistan's disappointing misuse of UNESCO to spew venom against India and politicise it," she added.

Ananya Agarwal noted that Pakistan, in 2018, had ranked 14th on the fragile state index.

Pakistan is a country whose leader uses the UN platform to openly preach nuclear war and issue a call to arms against other nations, said Ms Agarwal, referring to Prime Minister Imran Khan's remarks at the UN General Assembly session in September, in which he had said that if there were to be a face-off between two nuclear-armed neighbours, the consequences would go far beyond their borders.

"Would this gathering believe if I told them that one of Pakistan's former presidents, General Pervez Musharraf, recently called terrorists such as Osama Bin Laden and the Haqqani network as Pakistan's heroes," she questioned.

Ms Agarwal stressed that Pakistan had been engaging in diabolic rhetoric to malign India in front of the international community irrespective of the deplorable conditions of human rights suffered by the minority community on its own soil.

"From 1947, when the minorities formed 23 per cent of Pakistan's population, they have now dwindled to nearly 3 per cent. It has subjected Christians, Sikhs, Ahmadiyyas, Hindus, Shias, Pashtuns, Sindhis and Balochis to draconian blasphemy laws, blatant abuse and forced conversions. The gender-based crimes against women include including honour killings, acid attacks forced conversions, forced marriages and child marriages remain a severe problem in Pakistan today," she said.

India, she emphasized, "strongly rejects the fabricated falsehoods peddled by Pakistan in its statement overflowing with hypocrisy to hide its own pathetic and pitiable records as a nation including its own treatment of minorities, the spread of hate speech and glorification of terrorism."

In her concluding remarks, the panelist hoped that the UNESCO membership would come together to reject such a gross misuse of the platform by any member nation.