High time to hold Pak accountable for persecution of minorities: India to UN

New Delhi, Sep 14: India on Wednesday said that it is high time that the United Nations (UN) held Pakistan accountable for the systemic persecution of and institutional discrimination perpetrated against its religious and ethnic minorities.

"We regret that OIC countries, with whom we share close ties, failed in preventing Pakistan from misusing OIC platforms to push anti-India propaganda," Pawankumar Badhe, First Secretary, Permanent Mission of India said in a statement.

Badhe said Pakistan has again abused the country by peddling its malicious propaganda against India. My delegation rejects its baseless statements. They don't deserve our response," added Badhe.

The bureaucrat added that considering Pakistan's own top leadership in the past openly acknowledged creating terrorist groups and training them to fight in Afghanistan and Indian UT of Jammu and Kashmir, "Pakistan's audacity, as a self-styled torchbearer for human rights of people of India, is appalling".

India urged the council to use its mechanisms to call upon Pakistan to take credible steps to end its state-sponsored terrorism and dismantle the terrorist infrastructure in territories under its control

Pawan Badhe also mentioned that Pakistan has an abysmal record in the promotion and protection of the human rights of its people and has one of the worst records in ensuring the right to freedom of religion or belief for its minorities.

"Extrajudicial abductions, enforced disappearances, arbitrary detentions, and tortures have been used by Pakistan as tools of state policy to target human rights defenders, political activists, students, and journalists and to crush dissent," added Badhe.