Launching a blistering attack on Pakistan at the UNESCO General Conference in Paris, India said that the cash-strapped nation has terrorism embedded in its DNA and that the country’s “neurotic behavior" is responsible for the ravaged state of its economy and society.
“Pakistan's neurotic behaviour has resulted in its decline to a nearly failed state with its weak economy, radicalised society and deep-rooted DNA of terrorism," said Ananya Agarwal, who led the Indian delegation at the summit. According to a report by the news agency ANI, she was responding to Pakistan’s allegations against India on the current situation in Jammu and Kashmir. "We condemn Pakistan's disappointing misuse of UNESCO to spew venom against India and politicise it," she added.
Agarwal noted that Pakistan, in 2018, ranked 14th on the fragile state index.
The Indian diplomat accused the country’s prime minister Imran Khan of using the UN platform to “openly preach nuclear war”, referring to his fiery speech at the September session at the UN General Assembly whereby he had said that if it if there is a face-off between two nuclear-armed neighbours, the consequences would be far beyond their borders.
Sharpening her attack, she asked whether "this gathering would believe if I told them that one of Pakistan's former president's Gen. Pervez Musharraf recently called terrorists such as Osama Bin laden and Haqqani network as Pakistan's heroes."
Agarwal stated that Pakistan has been engaging into such “diabolic rhetoric” to malign India in front of the international community irrespective of the deplorable conditions of human rights suffered by the minority community on its own soil.
"From 1947, when the minorities formed 23 per cent of Pakistan's population they have now dwindled to make nearly 3 per cent. It has subjected Christians, Sikhs, Ahmadiyya, Hindus, Shias, Pashtuns, Sindhis and Balochis to draconian blasphemy laws, blatant abuse and forced conversions. The gender-based crimes against women include including honour killings, acid attacks forced conversions, forced marriages and child marriages remain a severe problem in Pakistan today," she was quoted as saying.
Calling Pakistan a hypocrite, the diplomat expressed vehement denial of the “fabricated falsehoods peddled by Pakistan” in an attempt to hide its “own pathetic and pitiable records as a nation including its own treatment of minorities, the spread of hate speech and glorification of terrorism.”
In her concluding remarks, the panelist hoped that the UNESCO membership would come together to reject such a gross misuse of the platform by any member nation
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