Indian citizenship bill premised on falsehood: FO
The spokesperson said India should be last country to pretend being a protector of the minorities.
ISLAMABAD (Dunya News) –Pakistan on Friday rejected comments by Indian Ministry of External Affairs s Spokesperson about a tweet of Prime Minister Imran Khan regarding discriminatory citizenship bill passed by the Indian Parliament this week.
In a statement issued on Friday, Foreign Office spokesperson Dr Muhammad Faisal said many international human rights organizations and neutral observers even from within India have characterized the legislation as discriminatory against Muslims and unconstitutional.
The spokesperson reiterated that this Indian legislation is premised on a falsehood, both with regard to alleged decline in non-Muslim population in Pakistan as well as their alleged persecution in the country.
The spokesperson said objectively speaking, India should be the last country to pretend being a protector of the minorities.
The world s media have widely reported on and condemned the deplorable conditions of the minorities in India, especially since the assumption of office of right-wing BJP in 2014.
The spokesperson said architects of massacre of thousands of Muslims in Gujarat do not have the moral high-ground to preach about the rights of minorities to India s neighboring countries.
Today s India is synonymous with lynchings of members of minority communities including low caste Dalits by mobs, often with state complicity.
The persecution of nearly eight million unarmed and innocent Kashmiri Muslims, incarcerated by 900,000 Indian security forces for over four months, is a living testimony to India being a country with no respect for human rights and minority rights.
The spokesperson urged international community to take notice of the violation of minorities rights in India, including the Muslims of Jammu and Kashmir under the illegal occupation of India.
On Thursday, PM Imran Khan said India, under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has been moving systematically with a Hindu supremacist agenda. The prime minister was referencing the controversial Citizenship Amendment Bill passed by India’s upper house amid protests.
Taking to Twitter, Prime Minister Imran stated that the bill was the latest of Modi’s attempts to promulgate his supremacist agenda, “starting with illegal annexation and continuing siege of IOJK [Indian occupied Jammu and Kashmir]; then stripping 2 million Indian Muslim in Assam of citizenship, setting up internment camps; now the passage of Citizenship Amendment Law; all this accompanied by mob lynchings of Muslims and other minorities in India”.
He warned that bowing down to a “genocidal supremacist agenda”, propagated by Nazi Germany, had once before lead to World War II.
“Modi’s Hindu supremacist agenda, accompanied by threats to Pakistan under a nuclear overhang, will lead to massive bloodshed and far-reaching consequences for the world,” he warned. “As in Nazi Germany, in Modi’s India dissent has been marginalised and the world must step in before it is too late to counter this Hindu supremacist agenda of Modi’s India [that is] threatening bloodshed and war.”
