United Nations: India told the UN Security Council on Wednesday that Pakistan’s “inhuman conduct” and long record of violence amount to efforts to externalise internal failures, remarks delivered during the Council’s Annual Open Debate on the Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict.
Ambassador Harish Parvathaneni, India’s Permanent Representative to the UN, directly responded after Pakistan raised Jammu and Kashmir during the debate. “It is ironic that Pakistan, with its long‑tainted record of genocidal acts, has chosen to refer to issues that are strictly internal to India,” he said, condemning Pakistan’s intervention in the forum.
Pakistan’s recent strikes in Afghanistan drew particular condemnation from the Indian envoy.
Kabul Hospital Strike
Recalling the March attack on the Omid Addiction Treatment Hospital in Kabul, he said: “The world has not forgotten that it was during the holy month of Ramadan in March this year, at a time of peace, reflection, and mercy, that Pakistan conducted a barbaric airstrike on the Omid Addiction Treatment Hospital in Kabul.”
Parvathaneni cited the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) to describe the human toll.
“According to UNAMA, this cowardly and unconscionable act of violence claimed the lives of 269 civilians and injured a further 122 in a facility which can by no means be justified as a military target,” he said, using the UN mission’s casualty figures to underscore his point.
He accused Pakistan of double standards on international law, calling its posture “hypocritical” in light of attacks on civilians. “It is hypocritical of Pakistan to espouse high principles of international law while ‘targeting innocent civilians in the dark’,” Parvathaneni said, condemning the timing of the strikes which occurred at the conclusion of tarawih evening prayers when many patients were leaving the mosque, as UNAMA reported.
Beyond the Kabul strike, he referenced the broader displacement caused by cross‑border violence.
“Over 94,000 people were assessed as displaced due to cross‑border armed violence perpetrated against Afghan civilians, according to UNAMA,” he said, citing the UN assessment to frame the regional humanitarian impact.
Parvathaneni broadened his criticism to include Pakistan’s past actions. “Such heinous acts of aggression by Pakistan should not come as a surprise from a country that ‘bombs its own people and conducts systematic genocide’,” he said, linking recent attacks to disputed historical abuses.
1971 Abuses Cited As Evidence
Referring to the 1971 war that created Bangladesh, he said Pakistan had ordered serious abuses during Operation Searchlight. “He said that Pakistan sanctioned the systematic campaign of genocidal mass rape of 400,000 women citizens by its own army during Operation Searchlight in 1971.”
Operation Searchlight, the codename for the Pakistani Army’s operation against the Bangladeshi nationalist movement in what was then East Pakistan in March 1971, is widely documented in historical accounts and remains a central point of contention in the subcontinent’s history.
“Such inhuman conduct reflects Pakistan’s repeated attempts over decades to externalise internal failures through increasingly desperate acts of violence both within and beyond its borders. With no faith, no law, and no morality, the world can see through Pakistan’s propaganda,” he said.
The exchange came during an annual debate focused on the protection of civilians, where member states often raise both ongoing crises and grievances against one another. Pakistan’s representative had brought up Jammu and Kashmir earlier in the session, prompting India’s forceful rebuttal that framed Pakistan’s criticisms as deflections from its own record of violence.
