Imran Khan has yet again raked up Kashmir issue at UN General Assembly touching on a range of topics that included climate change, global Islamophobia and “the plunder of the developing world by their corrupt elites”.
He reserved his harshest words, for India’s government once again labeling Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist government “fascist.”
Khan also turned his ire on Muslim community for what he perceives as a free pass given to India.
“It is unfortunate, very unfortunate, that the world’s approach to violations of human rights lacks even-handedness, and even is selective. Geopolitical considerations, or corporate interests, commercial interests often compel major powers to overlook the transgressions of their affiliated countries,” Khan said.
He went through a litany of actions that have “unleashed a reign of fear and violence against India’s 200 million strong Muslim community,” he said, including lynchings, pogroms and discriminatory citizenship laws.
As in years past, Imran Khan — who favors delivering his speeches in his British-inflected English, in contrast to Modi’s Hindi addresses — devoted substantial time to Kashmir.
“New Delhi has also embarked on what it ominously calls the ‘final solution’ for the Jammu and Kashmir dispute,” Khan said, rattling off a list of what he termed “gross and systematic violations of human rights” committed by Indian forces. He specifically decried the “forcible snatching of the mortal remains of the great Kashmiri leader, ” Syed Ali Geelani , who died earlier this month at 91.
Geelani’s family has said authorities took his body and buried him discreetly and without their consent, denying the separatist leader revered in Kashmir a proper Islamic burial.
This development comes ahead of Narendra Modi’s address at the 76th session of UNGA.