Pakistan human rights minister may raise Jammu and Kashmir in UN speech today

Mazari, who has previously accused the EU of adopting discriminatory approach by not mentioning human rights violations by India in Kashmir and against its minorities, is expected to obliquely raise CAA by talking about religious persecution.

Updated on: Feb 25, 2020, 05:40:16 IST

Hindustan Times, New Delhi | By Shishir Gupta

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With Pakistan foreign minister Makdoom Shah Mehmood Qureshi dropping out of the event at the last minute, Shireen Mazari, the country’s human rights minister, is expected to speak at the UN Human Rights Council session at Geneva on Tuesday, and accuse India of human rights abuses in Jammu and Kashmir.

Shireen Mazari, Pakistan’s human rights minister, is expected to speak at the UN Human Rights Council session at Geneva (Photo: PTI)

Mazari, who has previously accused the European Union of adopting discriminatory approach by not mentioning human rights violations by India in Kashmir and against its minorities, is expected to obliquely raise the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) by talking about religious persecution. The act fast-tracks Indian citizenship for persecuted religious minorities from Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan.

Indian representative Vikas Swarup, Secretary (West), will address the UNHRC on February 26 and is expected to give a firm riposte to the Pakistani allegations. Unlike the Financial Action Task Force, Pakistan does not have support of its close allies Malaysia and Turkey in the 47 member UNHRC. Even its all-weather ally China isn’t a member.

Pakistan minister Shireen Mazari did not find any traction to her charges against India in the EU, with India’s External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar meeting all EU Foreign Ministers at Brussels last week and explaining India’s position on both the nullification of Article 370 as well as the CAA.

However, Pakistan is waiting for China to assume presidentship of the UNSC in March for a month to make its next move against India, people familiar with the matter said.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shishir Gupta
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.Read More

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