NEW DELHI (Dispatches) – India and Pakistan have clashed at the United Nations as Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan accused the rival of a “reign of terror” on Muslims.
Khan delivered his speech on Friday to the UN General Assembly (UNGA) by video due to COVID-19 precautions, saying Prime Minister Narendra Modi is planning to “purge India of Muslims”.
In a prerecorded speech aired during the evening, the Pakistani prime minister touched on a range of topics that included climate change, global Islamophobia and “the plunder of the developing world by their corrupt elites”.
But Khan reserved his harshest words for India, once again labeling Modi’s Hindu nationalist government “fascist”.
“The worst and most pervasive form of Islamophobia now rules India,” Khan said in his address.
“The hate-filled Hindutva ideology, propagated by the fascist RSS-BJP regime, has unleashed a reign of fear and violence against India’s 200 million-strong Muslim community,” he said.
Khan was referring to Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party and the affiliated Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, a century-old Hindu revivalist movement with a paramilitary component.
Under Modi, India has rescinded the autonomy of Kashmir, its only Muslim-majority region, pushed through a citizenship law that critics call discriminatory and has witnessed repeated flare-ups of religious-based violence.
Speaking on the day Modi was visiting the White House, Khan said that commercial interests with billion-plus India were allowing it to “get away with human rights abuses with complete impunity”.
Sneha Dubey, a first secretary at India’s UN mission, accused Pakistan of sheltering and glorifying Al-Qaeda mastermind Osama bin Laden who was killed by U.S. special forces in a 2011 raid in the army city of Abbottabad.
“This is the country which is an arsonist disguising itself as a firefight,” she said.
“Pakistan nurtures terrorists in their back yard in the hope that they will only harm their neighbors.”