KL NEWS NETWORK
SRINAGAR
Pakistan on Monday told the United Nations that the “brutalization” of people in Kashmir constituted “state terrorism”.
Pakistan’s Permanent Ambassador to UN, Dr Maleeha Lodhi while participating in the UN debate on Measures to Eliminate International Terrorism, “focused” the world body’s attention to the “continued killings in Kashmir”, Pakistan Foreign Affairs Ministry said in a statement posted on its website. She said that people of Kashmir are struggling for their legitimate right to self-determination.
“The continued denial of the right to self-determination to people living under foreign occupation is a violation of international law as enshrined in the UN Charter,” Dr Lodhi said.
Ambassador Lodhi pointed out that “such violations” of international law and the UN Charter should not be ignored.
In her discussion on terrorism, Ambassador Lodhi made an impassioned plea to the global community to address the underlying causes of international terrorism.
The Pakistani envoy also urged the international community to address longstanding situations of conflict and injustice in order to prevent the spread of extremism. “Conflicts undermine development, break down governance, create a sense of injustice and fuel violence.”
“Yet in the context of preventing extremism, the global community has yet to address longstanding situations of conflict and injustice,” she asserted.
She said, “an important factor why the world has not been able to defeat terrorism, despite tougher measures, is because the international community has been unable or unwilling to deal with the ‘conditions conducive to terrorism’.”
“But despite being obvious causative factors, the international community seems to lack the will to address these,” she added.
Ambassador Lodhi criticized those political forces in the West who were fanning Islamophobia. “While there is consensus in the global community that terrorism cannot be associated with any religion, we see extreme Right parties in the West seeking to reap political dividends by fanning Islamophobia.”
“Why is no action taken against this deliberate hate mongering,” she asked.
Pakistan, Dr Lodhi said, has been the principal victim of terrorism including that ‘supported, sponsored and financed’ from abroad. “We have lost more than 60,000 lives; many more have been injured.”
Expressing Pakistan’s determination to counter terrorism, she said, “these losses have not diminished my country’s commitment to fight this menace. It has only reinforced our will to fight until the last terrorist is eliminated from the country.”
Reiterating Pakistan’s full commitment in its struggle against terrorism, Dr Lodhi pressed for a holistic approach that would address the root causes of conflicts as well as the now well-acknowledged drivers of radicalization that lie in economic and social marginalization and exclusion.
“Without taking a holistic approach, we will be fighting symptoms and not the underlying causes of the disease itself,” she said.
