Pakistan urges UN to investigate India’s organized spying operations

Islamabad: Pakistan on Thursday condemning the Indian government’s recently-exposed organized spying operations using an Israeli spyware `Pegasus’, called on the relevant UN bodies to thoroughly investigate the matter, bring the facts to light, and hold the Indian perpetrators to account.

“Reportedly, the targeted telephones also included at least one number used by Prime Minister Imran Khan as well as hundreds of others in Pakistan,” Foreign Office Spokesperson Zahid Hafeez Chaudhri told a weekly news briefing.

He said the reported targets of those massive spying operations included journalists, politicians, human rights activists, business executives, public health experts, foreign diplomats in India and the Kashmiri leaders.

The Foreign Office Spokesperson said that keeping a clandestine tab on dissenting voices was a long-standing textbook ploy of the RSS-BJP regime.

He said the world had seen the true face of the so-called Indian “democracy” when the reports of EU Disinfo Lab, Indian Chronicles, surfaced last year.

“In view of the gravity of these reports, we call on the relevant UN bodies to thoroughly investigate the matter, bring the facts to light, and hold the Indian perpetrators to account,” he added.

About the situation in the Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK), the Spokesperson said that 5th August 2021, would mark the completion of an unprecedented 24 months long military siege and draconian curbs on the fundamental rights and freedoms of Kashmiri people in the aftermath of India’s illegal and unilateral actions.

He further said that in keeping with its long held tradition of peddling false propaganda, India was trying to push the sham narrative of so-called “normalcy” in IIOJK.

“However, the situation on the ground points to the contrary. To this day, Kashmiri leadership remains incarcerated under trumped-up charges. Extra-judicial killings, arbitrary detentions, staged cordon-and-search operations and custodial torture by the Indian occupation forces continue with impunity,” he added.

The Foreign Office Spokesperson said that the Indian government continued pushing its agenda of turning the Kashmiris into a minority in their own homeland through illegal changes in the demographic structure of the occupied territory.

“The past two years have been marked by Pakistan’s efforts to firmly oppose the unilateral and illegal Indian actions of August 2019. We have used every platform to highlight the legal, humanitarian and peace and security dimensions of the dispute,” he added.

“The United Nations Security Council has discussed the issue of Jammu and Kashmir at least three times since 5 August 2019; the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has issued two reports in 2018 and 2019, making specific recommendations including the institution of an Independent Commission of Inquiry to investigate the gross and systematic human rights violations by India in the occupied territory; the global parliaments have debated the issue of Jammu and Kashmir; the international human rights and humanitarian organizations as well as global media have consistently raised the issue of human rights violations in IIOJK,” the Spokesperson mentioned.

“We once again call upon the international community to urge the Government of India to: reverse its illegal and unilateral actions of 5 August 2019; lift the continuing inhuman military siege; remove restrictions on communications, movement and peaceful assembly; release the incarcerated Kashmiri leaders and allow them to express the wishes of the Kashmiri people; free arbitrarily and illegally detained Kashmiri youth; reverse the new domicile rules designed to change the demographic structure of the occupied territory; remove the draconian laws granting impunity to the Indian occupation forces; stop sponsoring terrorism against the people of IIOJK; desist from any further actions in IIOJK to perpetuate its illegal occupation; and fulfill its obligation of holding a free and impartial plebiscite under the UN auspices, to let the Kashmiris exercise their inalienable right to self-determination as enshrined in numerous UNSC resolutions,” he stressed.

The Foreign Office Spokesperson maintained that the Government and the people of Pakistan will continue to stand with Kashmiris in their just struggle till the realization of their right to self-determination.