'Indian actions could lead to catastrophe'


From Our Correspondent
New york: Pakistan has warned that India’s unilateral annexation of Jammu and Kashmir, imposition of a crippling, military-enforced curfew in the disputed state and mass arrests of Kashmiris, as also its hostile actions against Indian Muslims could propel South Asia “towards a catastrophe”.
“It is high time for the international community to wake up to the clear and present danger and intervene to defuse this India-instigated crisis,” Ambassador Munir Akram told the UN General Assembly on Thursday.
Speaking in a debate on “Culture of Peace”, the Pakistani envoy said that as a party to the Kashmir dispute, the United Nations has an obligation to secure the implementation of the Security Council resolutions and also to protect the human rights of the Kashmiri people, including their right to self-determination.
In his speech, Ambassador Akram deplored that the war on terror, following the 11 September 2001
terrorist attacks in the United States, has virtually turned into a war on Islam. The “pernicious” equation of Islam with terrorism had been used to justify discrimination against Muslim individuals, communities and entire nations as well as a series of foreign invasions in the Muslim world. “It has also justified denial of justice and self-determination to the Palestinian and Kashmiri peoples,” he added.
Noting that Islamophobia was becoming even more pervasive, the Pakistani envoy said that the phenomenon has assumed a ‘deadly dimension” in India. The mothership of governing Bharatiya Janata Party is the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a fascist organization created almost 100 years ago by its founder, Gowalker, who advocated “cleansing” of Muslims and other minorities from India’s “Aryan” Hindu population, Ambassador Akram said.
“The RSS’ gangs of violent thugs organize and behave like Hitler’s Brown Shirts.” Pointing out out that a RSS member had assassinated Mahatama Gandhi, he said that in 1992 the organization’s mob destroyed the historic Babri Mosque in Ayodhya. Last month, the Indian Supreme Court handed-over the Mosque site to those who destroyed it. to build a Hindu Temple. The same year, in 1992, he added, thousands of Muslims were killed in Mumbai by Hindu extremist mobs. “There is considerable evidence that, in 2002, (Prime Minister Narendra Modi), a life-long member of the RSS, as Chief Minister of Gujrat orchestrated the massacre of 2000 Muslim men, women and children there.”
In several parts of India, the Pakistani envoy said, the plan for ethnic cleansing was being implemented.
In Assam, he said, two million Muslims and Christians have been arbitrarily stripped of their Indian nationality. Thousands were being held in concentration camps, and the new nationality registration was to be applied across India. In this regard, he pointed to the passage by Indian Parliament of a patently anti-Muslim law called the Citizenship Amendment Bill, which envisions granting citizenship to all in India except the Muslims.