India has lashed out at Pakistan’s permanent representative to the UN for “weaponizing women’s rights issues through empty rhetoric” for self-serving political gain in the flashpoint region of Jammu and Kashmir.
First secretary in India’s permanent mission to the UN Paulomi Tripathi during the UN General Assembly Third Committee session on ‘Advancement of Women’ asserted that from the first woman president of the General Assembly Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit to women scientists at the ISRO, Indian women have long served as inspiration for many. She was responding to references made to J&K by Islamabad’s outgoing envoy to the UN Maleeha Lodhi. Lodhi had alluded to a picture of a Kashmiri mother that appeared on the front page of The New York Times along with an article about how the mother lost her son, as she could not get medical help on time.
Without naming Pakistan, Tripathi said that the country covets the territory of others and camouflages its “vile intentions with fake concerns”. “It is ironical that a country, where violations of women’s right to life in the name of so called ‘honour’ go unpunished, is making baseless statements about women’s rights in my country,” she said.
Tripathi said the international community still remembered that the “armed forces of this country” perpetrated dreadful sexual violence against women with impunity, in India’s immediate neighbourhood in 1971.
