Baseless: India slams UN rapporteur for objecting to G20 meet in Srinagar

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, May 16

India has put down an attempt to rake up Kashmir at the United Nations, ahead of a G20 meeting scheduled in Srinagar next week.

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Terming as “baseless” the comments of a UN Special Rapporteur on Minority Issues, the Indian Mission in Geneva said the statement issued on minority issues contained “unwarranted allegations”.

“As G20 president, it is India’s prerogative to host its meetings in any part of the country,” asserted the Indian Mission in a tweet.

UN Special Rapporteur (SR) Fernand de Varennes has tweeted that holding a G20 meeting in J&K while massive human rights violations are ongoing is lending support to attempts by India to “normalise the brutal and repressive denial of democratic and other rights of Kashmiri Muslims and minorities”.

“G20 should on the contrary uphold international human rights obligations and the UN Declaration of Human Rights. The situation in J&K should be decried and condemned, not pushed under the rug and ignored with the holding of this meeting,” he said in a statement.

“We are aghast that Varennes has acted irresponsibly to politicise this issue. He has misused his position as SR to publicise on social media his presumptive and prejudiced conclusions in a gross violation of the code of conduct for SRs,” said the Indian Mission.

Srinagar will host the G20 meeting of the working group on tourism from May 22 to May 24. Pakistan too had raised the issue to which India had replied that it was strange that a country which was not a part of G20 was being unnecessarily intrusive. The latest attempt by Pakistan Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari on the sidelines of the Goa Foreign Ministers’ meeting was dismissed by External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar.

“I don’t think there is a G20 issue to debate with anybody, certainly not with a country which has nothing to do with G20. J&K was, is, and will always be a part of India. The G20 meetings are held in all Indian states and UTs, so it is completely natural that it is held there,” he had said.

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