Developing countries: President urges developed states to extend financial aid

President Dr Arif Alvi on Monday called upon the developed countries to extend financial relief to the developing countries to manage the consequences, resulting in the Covid-19 crisis.

Addressing a virtual summit of Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) for Covid-19, he urged the global countries to take urgent initiatives for debt relief, discourage intolerance and discrimination, and provide equal health excess to all people.

President Alvi also expressed alarm over what he termed an increase in religious intolerance, hate speech and Islamophobia in "our immediate neighbourhood" - India.

"There has been alarming increase in religious intolerance, hate speech, Islamophobia, xenophobia and other forms of discrimination. Children, women and elderly have faced verbal abuse, death threats and physical attacks. Muslims have been denied access to vital health services. Nowhere are these trends more pronounced than in our immediate neighbourhood," he said.

Alvi regretted over Indian brutalities and atrocities in Indian occupied Kashmir.

He said that people of Kashmir had been made to suffer under a political lockdown imposed by India in August last year.

The president said the situation in Indian occupied Kashmir had become more aggravated in the wake of the pandemic, where Kashmiris continued to be denied high speed internet, and access to the medical and other supplies.

The president blasted the "far-right" Indian government for its hate-mongering, and said that its actions were a part of its "ideological dispensation and anti-minority agenda".

The special online summit of the heads of state and governments of the NAM member states was convened at the initiative of President Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan, in his capacity as current chair of the movement.