United Nations: In his 30-minute speech at this year’s UN General Assembly on September 25, Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan spent a significant amount of time hurling veiled barbs against “neighbours”, essentially referencing his country’s long-standing disputes with India. Other subjects that Khan mentioned in his speech included fiscal recovery from the impact of Covid-19, international money laundering and its impact on developing countries, climate change and Islamophobia.
After he had addressed these issues, Khan spent the remainder of his time talking about Kashmir and India’s abrogation of Article 370 last year and its ongoing diplomatic disputes with India.
How Imran direct the narrative towards India?
Imran's focuses on Pakistan’s disputes with India came when he touched upon his country’s foreign policy. “A just and humane society where all government policies are directed at lifting our citizens out of poverty and creating a just and equitable dispensation. Thus our foreign policy aims to have peace with our neighbours and to settle disputes through dialogue,” Khan had said. A few minutes later, Khan indicated that the UN was the only body that could help Pakistan achieve its goals in its neighbourhood. He then switched to indirectly referencing the abrogation of Article 370 by claiming that the “self-determination of peoples, the sovereign equality and territorial integrity of states, non-interference in the internal affairs, international cooperation; all these ideals are being systematically eroded.” Before moving on to focusing on the Covid-19 pandemic and how Pakistan has coped with infections, Khan said: “International agreements are being set aside….military occupation, illegal annexations are suppressing the rights of human beings to self-determination.”
Khan talks about Islamophobia
Khan said the Covid-19 pandemic has “fanned nationalism” and “has given rise to racial and religious hatred and violence” against minorities and has accentuated “Islamophobia”. Khan pointed to French news publication Charlie Hebdo for republishing “blasphemous sketches”, and said wilful provocations and incitement to hate and violence” must be “outlawed”. Although he said that Muslims were being “targeted with impunity” in several countries and their shrines destroyed, he refrained from calling out China for its persecution of Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang.
What did Khan say about India?
Khan singled out India in his speech by claiming that it was the only “one country” that “state sponsors Islamophobia”, rooted in “RSS ideology”. Khan went on to discuss the origins of RSS in significant detail, claiming that the organisation was “inspired by the Nazis” and their “concepts of racial purity and supremacy. While the Nazis hate was directed at the Jews, the RSS directs it towards the Muslims and to a lesser extent towards the Christians,” Khan said.
Citing the examples of the demolition of the Babri Masjid and the burning of the Samjhota Express train, the RSS, Khan said, believes that India is “exclusive for Hindus and others are not equal citizens” and had engaged in the “cleansing” of “200 million Muslims and other minorities”.
Khan also mentioned the NRC and CAA, particularly its impact in Assam, where “two million Muslims” were facing the stripping of their citizenship. “There are reports of large concentration camps being filled with Muslim Indian citizens,” Khan said (sic).
Khan briefly mentioned that Muslims were being “falsely blamed, vilified and victimised” for the spread of Covid -19 in reference to the Tablighi Jamaat and cow vigilantes. In what seems like a reference to the CAA and NRC, Khan called “mass registrations” a “precursor to genocide” and equated it with Germany in 1935 during the implementation of the Nuremberg Laws and the implementation of Myanmar’s citizenship laws in 1982. Khan added that “Hindutva ideology…does not augur well for the future of India”.
Last in its attacks against India was the issue of Kashmir, particularly the abrogation of Article 370. Khan accused India of “upping the military ante” against Pakistan to divert attention from Jammu and Kashmir. Khan claimed that Islamabad had “exercised maximum restraint” in circumstances where India had purportedly engaged in “provocations and ceasefire violations” along the Line of Control and Working Boundary.
Khan stated that Islamabad would fight for “its freedom to the end” if India’s “fascist totalitarian RSS-led government” attempted to “aggress” Pakistan. Khan ended his speech on Kashmir by saying that there would be no “peace and stability” in South Asia till the conflict in Jammu and Kashmir was resolved “on the basis of international legitimacy”.
Pointing to the United Nations Security Council resolution 1264 in 1999 where the international body intervened in East Timor for the people to vote for independence from Indonesia, Khan called for similar resolutions to be enacted in Jammu and Kashmir. “India must rescind the measures it has instituted since 5 August 2019,” Khan said.
