Prime Minister Imran Khan on Wednesday said the fascist Modi government in India has become a threat to neighbouring states, putting region’s peace in danger.
“The Hindutva Supremacist Modi Govt with its arrogant expansionist policies, akin to Nazi’s Lebensraum (Living Space), is becoming a threat to India’s neighbours,” the prime minister said in a tweet, giving reference of Hitler’s policies justifying the German expansion in Europe based on racism.
Imran Khan said India is a threat to Pakistan in shape of false flag operation, while other neighbours including Bangladesh face the threat through Citizenship Act and Nepal and China through border disputes. He said minorities in India are also under threat after being relegated to ‘second class citizens’.
Imran Khan mentioned that India after illegal annexation of Indian-held Kashmir is subject to committing a war crime under 4th Geneva Convention and now also for laying claim to Azad Jammu and Kashmir.
Meanwhile, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation’s Independent Permanent Human Rights Commission (OIC-IPHRC) on Wednesday welcomed United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’ rejection of anti-Muslim bigotry during the situation of coronavirus pandemic. “(This) echoes his commitment to challenge and combat ethno-nationalism and all forms of intolerances which are rising in post-Covid scenario,” the OIC-IPHRC said in a tweet.
The OIC-IPHRC reiterated that instances of Islamophobia are violative of human rights law, undermine multiculturalism and pose a threat to international peace and security. The OIC’s expert body with advisory capacity supported ‘focused, consistent and system wide collective OIC and the UN approaches to counter the Islamophobia’. Earlier, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres had said that countering anti-Muslim hatred and Islamophobia was his ‘top priority’ and that he ‘fully agreed’ with the assessment that it could pose a threat to international peace and security.
The UN chief gave the statement recently at the virtual meeting of Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) member states at the United Nations (UN) in response to the comments from Pakistan’s Ambassador to the UN Munir Akram, who drew his attention to the rising cases of anti-Muslim violence and Islamophobia in India and urged him to adopt a more focused and consistent system-wise approach to fully tackle the menace. While voicing his concern over the rise of Islamophobia, the secretary-general had called for fighting the phenomenon collectively.
In his remarks, Ambassador Akram had raised concerns about the alarming rise in Islamophobia and stigmatization of Muslims in India in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. He had also highlighted the oppressive measures imposed in Indian Occupied Jammu and Kashmir since August 5, last year when New Delhi annexed the disputed region in violation of UN resolutions. While terming these developments a matter of ‘grave concern’, Ambassador Akram had noted that such vitriolic hate speech, state-sponsored Islamophobia and deliberate targeting of Muslims in India was not only a human rights challenge but could also endangered peace and security in the region.
Earlier, the Permanent Representative of the OIC Observer Mission in New York, Agshin Mehdiyev, had also noted the exploitation of Covid-19-related fears where the public discourse had been weaponzied against Muslims by stoking Islamophobia. In this regard, he had made reference to the OIC’s latest statements urging the government of India to take immediate steps to end discriminatory treatment of Muslims. The OIC-IPHRC, based in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, is one of the principal organs working independently in the area of human rights. Separately, Federal Minister for Information and Broadcasting Senator Shibli Faraz Wednesday said that the statement of UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on countering anti-Muslim hatred being his top priority is victory of Pakistan’s stance.
In a tweet, the minister welcomed the United Nations Secretary General’s pledge to root out Islamophobia as his top priority. He said that attributing coronavirus to Muslims is a reflection of BJP’s extremist thinking and its myopic mindset. He said that extremist attitude towards Muslims in India is a violation of human rights.
