FO reacts strongly to India’s MEA remarks about Bilawal

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan on Saturday rejected the Indian Ministry of External Affairs' statement about Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari’s remarks in a presser in New York against Prime Minister Narendra Modi and reminded the New Delhi of the shameful story of mass killings, lynching, rape, and plunder in 2002 Gujarat massacre.

“With its statement, the Indian government has tried to hide behind subterfuge and canard to conceal the realities of the 2002 Gujarat massacre. It is a shameful story of a mass killings, lynching, rape and plunder. The fact of the matter is that the masterminds of the Gujarat massacre have escaped justice and now hold key government positions in India,” said Foreign Office spokesperson Mumtaz Zahra Baloch while responding to media queries regarding the India’s MEA statement with regard to Foreign Minister Bilawal’s presser.

“No verbosity can hide the crimes of the “Saffron terrorists” in India. Hindutva, the political ideology of the ruling party, has given rise to a climate of hate, divisiveness and impunity,” she added.

She further stated that the culture of impunity is now deeply embedded in Hindutva-driven polity in India, adding that the acquittal of the mastermind and perpetrators of the heinous attack on Delhi-Lahore Samjhota Express, that killed 40 Pakistani nationals on Indian soil, demonstrates the massacre of justice under the RSS-BJP dispensation.

She said that the intimidation and demonization of religious minorities receives official patronage in states across India.

Hindutva supremacists have been unleashed to exercise cow vigilantism, ransack places of worship, and attack religious congregations, she added.

As it peddles a fictitious narrative of victimhood, she added that it is itself a perpetrator of repression in Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir and a sponsor and financier of terrorist groups in South Asia.

“Only this week, a dossier was released containing irrefutable evidence that substantiated India’s involvement in the 2021 terrorist attack in a peaceful Lahore neighborhood,” the spokesperson said, adding that the evidence gathered with international support confirms that the Lahore attack was instigated, planned and financed by the Indian state.

She said that the India’s MEA statement is also a reflection of India’s growing frustration over its failure in maligning and isolating Pakistan. After being unable to prevent Pakistan’s exit from FATF Grey List in October and international recognition of Pakistan’s counterterrorism efforts, India is desperately using international platforms to advance its agenda to defame and target Pakistan, she added.

“For a country with a grandiose vision about itself and its place in the world, India is following a policy of pettiness towards its neighbours.

We are confident that the international community would look through this facade and the dream of RSS-BJP to turn South Asia in its image will remain unrealized,” she added.

Earlier on Friday, the India’s MEA in a statement termed Foreign Minister Bilawal’s remarks about Prime Minister Modi as “Butcher of Gujrat,” as a “new low, even for Pakistan.”

“The Foreign Minister of Pakistan has obviously forgotten this day in 1971, which was a direct result of the genocide unleashed by Pakistani rulers against ethnic Bengalis and Hindus.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2022