Online Desk: Pakistan hit back after India described occupied Jammu and Kashmir as its “integral and inalienable part” during a UN Security Council debate on children and armed conflict, saying New Delhi was deluding itself by “stubbornly holding on to this legal fiction.” Pakistani delegate Rabia Ijaz addressing the 15-member Council said, “The reality is clear, Jammu and Kashmir remains a disputed territory, as recognized by Security Council resolutions demanding a free and fair plebiscite under UN auspices to determine its future,”

She was responding to an Indian representative who had claimed that Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh were Union territories while reacting to Pakistan Ambassador Munir Akram’s earlier statement in which he exposed India’s atrocities against children in the disputed Himalayan State with facts and figures. Detailing the plight of children in the occupied territories, where human rights violations are “tragically routine”, the Pakistani Ambassador told the Security Council, “Generations of Kashmiri children have grown up amidst fear of violence and repression under foreign occupation.”

The Indian envoy, Ambassador R. Ravindra, called the Pakistani ambassador’s remarks “politically motivated and “unfounded”, claiming, “As far as the Union Territories of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh are concerned they were, are and always will be an integral and inalienable part of India.” Exercising her right of reply, Ms Ijaz, the Pakistani delegate, accused the Indian representative of evading the facts presented by Ambassador Akram, “opting instead to recycle and present worn-out and fabricated assertions before this Council.”

“Their reluctance to engage with the truth should be a source of embarrassment,” she remarked. While accusing others, Ms. Ijaz, a second secretary in the Pakistan Mission to the UN, accused India of neglecting its own abysmal track record of grave violations against children in Kashmir and the crucial recommendations contained in last year’s report of the UN Secretary-General’s report on Children and Armed Conflict for protecting children in Kashmir, including ending the use of force and pellet guns, minimizing detention, and preventing abuse.

Referring to the children having been killed and subjected to violence in Pakistan in recent years, she said they were largely due to the terrorist attacks. “While Indian occupying forces have been responsible for grave violations against children in the occupied Kashmir, TTP (Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan) and BLA (Balochistan Liberation Army) have been behind the terrorist attacks against children in Pakistan including the cowardly and gut-wrenching terrorist attack against the Army Public School in 2014 claiming the lives of more than 130 innocent children,” she added.

The Pakistani delegate added, “We have shared concrete evidence that TTP and BLA have been financed and sponsored by Indian agencies. The captured Indian spy, an intelligence officer, Commander Kulbhushan Yadav, has confessed to India’s support to such terrorist and subversive activities.” Ms Ijaz said that Indian occupation forces’ measures to suppress protests and demands for fundamental freedoms in Kashmir were well-documented by the UN human rights office and other human rights organizations.

But, she added that India continued to deny fundamental rights to the Kashmiris, particularly the right to self-determination in clear violation of Article 25 of the UN Charter and numerous Security Council resolutions. “Indian state terrorism in occupied Jammu and Kashmir will not be able to dampen the spirit of those seeking their legitimate right to self-determination, the Pakistani delegate declared.