Using a two-pronged tactic in the Human Rights Council, Pakistan has raised the Kashmir issue while speaking on behalf of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) and then for itself.
In its reply during the debate on Wednesday at the UN in Geneva, India rejected the OIC statement saying the group had no standing in India's internal affairs and accused Pakistan of using "terrorism as a state policy under the guise of concern for human rights."
Islamabad also brought up Kulbhushan Jadhav, who is on death row in Pakistan accused of being an Indian intelligence agent, while replying to India's counter statement. Sumit Seth, a Counsellor in India's Mission in Geneva, said that the world does not need lessons in democracy and human rights from a "failed state" that has a record of protecting terrorists like Osama Bin Laden, persecuting minorities with blasphemy laws and enforcing disappearances. "As regards the references to India in the OIC statement of earlier today, we outrightly reject all those references," he said.
"The OIC has no locus standi on India's internal affairs." A Second Secretary in Pakistan's Geneva UN Mission, Qazi Saleem Ahmed Khan, speaking on behalf of the OIC, tried to link Kashmir to Palestine. Speaking about a 17-year-old Palestinian girl, Ahed Tamimi, who is on trial before an Israeli military tribunal on charges of assaulting Israeli soldiers, he slipped in a reference to Insha Mushtaq, a 16-year-old Kashmiri girl who lost her eyesight when hit by pellets fired by security forces.
In September, Pakistan's Permanent Representative to the UN in New York, Maleeha Lodhi held up a picture of an injured Palestinian girl that had been published in The New York Times claiming she was Kashmiri. Later during Wednesday's debate, Pakistan's Permanent Representative in Geneva, Faruk Amil, said he was concerned about what he called the drift of India towards a "political order marked by extremism and rank communalism." He referred to the beef controversy in India and alleged that Muslims carrying beef were being lynched.