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UN chief Guterres preached restraint to India after Pulwama, CAA and 370 abrogation
While Guterres condemned the killing of civilians at Pahalgam, he forgot to mention that the attackers killed the tourists on the basis of religious identity.
New Delhi: UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres's statement calling for India and Pakistan to exercise “maximum restraint” in the wake of the Pahalgam massacre is part of his standard template, as he gave a similar statement after February 26, 2019, Balakot air strike the post-Pulwama terror strike by Pakistan based Islamic terrorists.
While Guterres condemned the killing of civilians at Pahalgam on April 22, he forgot to mention that the attackers killed the tourists on the basis of religious identity and did not utter a word against Islamic terrorism.
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True to his politics, Guterres spoke against India after the Narendra Modi government abrogated Article 370 from then state of Jammu and Kashmir. He asked India to refrain from taking steps that could affect the status of Jammu and Kashmir and highlighted the 1972 Simla Agreement to substantiate his argument.
The fact is that Guterres spoke against India from Islamabad and raised non-existent concern about Indian Muslims after Parliament cleared the Citizenship Amendment Act on February 19, 2020. The statement talking about “risk of statelessness for two million Muslims on basis of CAA” was given by the UN top diplomat on the eve of US President Donald Trump visit to India.
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New Delhi witnessed a communal riot during that time even as Guterres raised personal concerns about rising discrimination against minorities in India. It is another matter, that the CAA has nothing to do with debarring Indians from citizenship.
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Given his past record, the Narendra Modi government has decided to ignore Guterres' “preachy” advice to India and concentrate on how to make Pakistan pay for using the Lashkar-e-Tayyeba terrorists for the Pahalgam attack in which 26 innocents were mowed down by AK-47 steel-coated bullets. PM Modi, on his part, is holding one-to-one meetings with national security planners and service chiefs to ensure that Rawalpindi will think twice before it launches a terror strike against India again.
