‘Terrorists in Pakistan enjoy free pass’: Indian diplomat at U.N.

India condemned Pakistan in the UN Security Council (UNSC), noting how terrorists benefit from free passage in Pakistan, while the lives of ‘ordinary people, especially those from minority communities, are turned upside down’.

At the UN’s Security Council, India’s Permanent Representative to the UN, R Madhu Sudan, cited Pakistan’s mention of the Kashmir dispute during a discussion of ‘protection of civilians in urban environments’. He said that the member states knew that Pakistan has a history and policy of harboring, aiding, and actively supporting terrorists.

Adding, ‘This is a country which has been globally recognized as one openly supporting, training, financing and arming terrorists as a matter of state policy’. India has experienced a number of terror attacks, from the 2008 Mumbai terror attack to the 2016 Uri and Pulwana attacks, where links to Pakistan-based terror groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba or Jaish-e-Muhammad have been established. Pakistan has also been linked to other international terror attacks, including the recent one in Texas.

Malik Faisal, an individual of Pakistani descent living in the UK, is believed to be the main perpetrator of the Texas hostage incident. In pointing out that Pakistan has the ‘ignoble record of hosting the largest number of terrorists proscribed by the UNSC’, the Indian diplomat recalled the incident when Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan called the 9/11 conspirator, Osama Bin Laden, a ‘martyr’ during a debate at the national assembly last year.

‘Pakistani Prime Minister (Imran Khan)and foreign minister (Shah Mahmood Qureshi) have been called out for being supporters of terrorists, including Osama Bin Laden, but they continue to carry on the same path undeterred,’ he said. Moreover, he mentioned the 26/11 terror incident, stating that the ‘perpetrators of the heinous terror attacks in Mumbai in 2008 continue to enjoy the patronage of the state they represent’.

According to the Indian diplomat, ‘No matter what the representative of Pakistan believes or desires, the union territories of Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh will always be part of India’. In a statement, he called on Pakistan to ‘immediately leave all illegally occupied areas’.