Pakistan is now “Terroristan” – the land of pure terror, India said in a formidable rebuttal at the UN on Thursday to Pakistani Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, who had called for a special envoy to Kashmir while alleging that the “struggle of the people in the region is being brutally suppressed by India”. India, exercising its Right of Reply after Mr Abbasi’s belligerent speech at the UN General Assembly, said it was “extraordinary” that the state that sheltered Osama bin Laden was creating narratives based on deception and deceit.
“In its short history, Pakistan is a geography synonymous with terror. The quest for a land of pure has actually produced ‘the land of pure terror’. Pakistan is now Terroristan with a flourishing industry producing and exporting global terrorism,” Eenam Gambhir, India’s First Secretary to the UN, said on Thursday.
India caustically described Pakistan as a country whose counter-terrorism policy was to “mainstream and upstream terrorists” by either providing safe havens to terror leaders in its military town or protecting them with political careers – a reference to Osama bin Laden, who was found and killed by US forces in the Pakistani town of Abbottabad, and terror mastermind Hafiz Saeed, who recently talked about floating a political party.
“Its current state can be gauged from the fact that Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, a leader of the UN designated terrorist organization Lashkar-e-Taiba, is now sought to be legitimized as a leader of a political party,” Ms Gambhir said. None of this, she said, can justify Pakistan’s avaricious efforts to covet territories of its neighbours. “In so far as India is concerned, Pakistan must understand that the state of Jammu and Kashmir is and will always remain an integral part of India. However much it scales up cross-border terrorism, it will never succeed in undermining India’s territorial integrity.”
Ms Gambhir also said Pakistan, after diverting billions of dollars in aid towards creating a dangerous infrastructure of terror, was “the polluter paying the price”.
“Even as terrorists thrive in Pakistan and roam its streets with impunity, we have heard it lecture about human rights in India. The world does not need lessons on democracy and human rights from a country whose own situation is charitably described as a failed state,” she said. Earlier, the Pakistan Prime Minister had devoted much of his first address to the UN General Assembly to accusing India of terror against his country and “war crimes” in Kashmir.
