United Nations, Oct 7 — India has strongly criticised the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), accusing it of being unable to distinguish between “victim and perpetrator” and between fact and fiction due to "wilful blindness" when it brings up Kashmir and New Delhi's action against Pakistan-based terror infrastructure.
“India retains the right to defend its people against cross-border terrorism emanating from Pakistan”, BJP MP Biplab Kumar Deb said here on Tuesday.
“Indeed, there will be consequences for indulging in terrorism”, he warned while responding to the statements made by OIC's chair, Saudi Arabia, at the General Assembly's Sixth Committee, which deals with international legal matters.
“It is regrettable that those delivering the statement are unable to separate fact from fiction and distinguish between victim and perpetrator,” he said.
He exposed the OIC's refusal to condemn Pakistan's brutal suppression of people in the part of Kashmir it occupies, saying, “Such wilful blindness only speaks of bigotry and intolerance”.
The statement by Saudi Arabia on behalf of the OIC did not directly name India while making identifiable references to its retaliation against terrorist bases in Pakistan in the aftermath of the Pahalgam massacre by a Pakistan-based terror organisation last year, and to Kashmir.
Deb said he was addressing “the statement delivered by the chair of the OIC on India's focused and measured actions against terror infrastructure in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Jammu and Kashmir, from where terrorist attacks against India were planned and directed”.
He said, “It is regrettable that those delivering the statement are unable to separate fact from fiction and distinguish between victim and perpetrator.”
Referring to what he characterised as “the OIC's unwarranted reference to the Indian Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir”, Deb said, “The OIC chair would do better to focus on Pakistan's illegal occupation, especially in Rawalakot, where wanton killings, brutal violence, and the denial of basic rights to the people living there are so visible”.
According to human rights groups, over 90 people have been killed in recent months in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. The Pakistan government, which has been fronting for the military, has brutally put down a popular movement for economic rights and against importing people from elsewhere to take over the area and against election manipulation.
Deb, a national secretary of the BJP and former Chief Minister of Tripura, is one of the MPs in India's delegation to the UN General Assembly session.