Pakistan condemns India’s malicious disinformation drive portraying Kashmiris’ struggle as terrorism

United Nations, October 21 (KMS): Pakistan’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Ambassador Munir Akram has deplored India’s systematic campaign to justify its decades-old suppression of the Kashmiris’ just freedom struggle by depicting it as terrorism.

Speaking to the General Assembly’s Third Committee, which deals with social, humanitarian and cultural matters, Ambassador Munir Akram said the international community should establish mechanisms through which India’s disinformation war against Pakistan, the people of Indian illegally occupied Jammu and Kashmir and India’s Muslim and other minorities can be exposed and its sponsors held to account.

The Pakistani envoy in a debate on the human rights maintained that the digital age is in danger of becoming the disinformation age. He said, the exponential proliferation of disinformation, especially through on-line platforms and social media, has spread social discord; fostered hate speech, racism, discrimination, xenophobia, Islamophobia; and exacerbated competing nationalisms and inter-State tensions and conflicts.

Ambassador Munir Akram said among the most repugnant manifestations of disinformation is the State-sponsored campaign of disinformation promoted by the Indian Government to serve its strategic and ideological objectives. Such disinformation is used systematically to justify the over 70-year-long suppression of the Kashmiri people and to cover up the war crimes and crimes against humanity being committed in the occupied territory, he said, adding Pakistan has been a principal target of India’s disinformation campaigns for over three decades.

The Pakistani envoy pointed out that much of India’s disinformation has been exposed by international and even by fact-checking portals in India. We should develop an International Plan of Action to counter disinformation, on-line and off-line, in the public and private domain, he added.

Ambassador Munir Akram urged the international community to establish institutional arrangements on interactions between States, media, and other stakeholders. He also stressed the importance of digital awareness, outlining the need to develop uniform rules and regulations for social media business companies.