UNITED NATIONS, May 20 (APP): At a virtual meeting of OIC Ambassadors to the UN on Tuesday, Pakistan highlighted the “ new and virulent” phenomena of Islamophobia in various parts of the world, saying it is most dangerous when sponsored by a state– as in India and Myanmar, according to informed sources.
In his remarks, Pakistan’s Ambassador to the UN, Munir Akram, said that the aim of the BJP-RSS government in India was to “cleanse” the country of all vestiges of its Islamic heritage, citing the recent Delhi anti-Muslim pogrom and declarations of the ruling party leaders, while noting that in Europe Islamophobia was evident in certain right wing parties’ manifestoes and the rapid rise in hate speech in the midst of the coronavirus crisis.
He pointed out that expatriate Hindu extremists actively promoted the Hindutva Islamophobic agenda and even insulted their host countries.
Updating the OIC group on the deteriorating human rights situation in Indian Occupied Jammu & Kashmir, Ambassador Akram pointed out that while world’s attention was riveted on the Covid-19 crisis, the Modi Government had promulgated arbitrary regulations to allow non-Kashmiris to acquire Kashmiri domicile, opening the door to a “demographic flooding” designed to change the Muslim majority State into a Hindu majority territory.
This, he stressed, was a blatant violation of the Security Council resolutions on Kashmir as well the Fourth Geneva Convention.
Ambassador Akram said that incidents of Islamophobia in India have become more pronounced amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. “With the circulation of concocted videos and posts, one single Tablighi congregation has been used to blame all Indian Muslims of a conspiracy to spread the virus in India, terming it: “corona terrorism”, “corona jihad” and a “Talbani crime”,
The Pakistani envoy observed that, historically, atrocities are the culmination of years of deliberately orchestrated prejudice and hate. He warned the OIC members not to be deceived by India’s “perfunctory assurances”. “The Muslims of India and occupied Jammu and Kashmir are in grave danger”.
Ambassador Akram invited the OIC countries to join Pakistan in a small Working Group which can consider actions that the OIC can take at the UN to counter Islamophobia.
Several OIC Ambassadors including Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Iran, Azerbaijan, Qatar, Malaysia and Egypt welcomed Pakistan’s proposal and need for a concerted OIC position on Islamophobia at the United Nations, the sources told APP.
Responding to the solitary dissenting voice of Maldives which objected to any criticism of India, the Pakistani ambassador told that country’s representative that New Delhi does not have a veto in the OIC, according to the sources.
