India Rebukes Pakistan At UNSC, Cites 1971 Genocide And Mass Rape In East Pakistan

India launched a strong counterattack against Pakistan at the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), condemning its “delusional tirade” over Kashmir and reminding the international community of the atrocities committed by the Pakistani army during the 1971 war in East Pakistan.

Parvathaneni Harish, India’s Permanent Representative to the UN, said New Delhi was “unfortunately fated to listen to the delusional tirade of Pakistan” during debates on Jammu and Kashmir, TOI reported.

Speaking at the UNSC’s Open Debate on Women, Peace and Security, he added, “Every year, we are unfortunately fated to listen to the delusional tirade of Pakistan against my country, especially on Jammu and Kashmir, the Indian territory they covet. Our pioneering record on the Women, Peace and Security agenda is unblemished and unscathed.”

Highlighting Pakistan’s history of human rights abuses, Harish declared, “A country that bombs its own people, conducts systematic genocide, can only attempt to distract the world with misdirection and hyperbole. This is a country that conducted Operation Searchlight in 1971 and sanctioned a systematic campaign of genocidal mass rape of 400,000 women citizens by its own army. The world sees through Pakistan’s propaganda.”

Operation Searchlight, a military crackdown in 1971, saw the Pakistani army kill up to 3 million civilians in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) and rape tens of thousands of women, particularly targeting Bengali communities and minorities.

India’s intervention in the conflict led to Pakistan’s defeat and the birth of Bangladesh.

The remark on “bombing its own people” was a reference to a recent Pakistani air force strike in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa that left more than 30 dead.

India has repeatedly urged Pakistan to abandon territorial claims and instead “focus on rescuing an economy on life support, a polity muzzled by military dominance, and a human rights record stained by persecution,” as India’s envoy Kshitij Tyagi told the Human Rights Council in Geneva last month.

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