NEW YORK: Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari said that India did not reach out to help Pakistan as unprecedented flooding in country devastated infrastructure and affected over 33 million people.

In an interview with France 24 in New York, he in response to a question said that neighbouring country has not helped Pakistan and Pakistan has also not asked for help either.

Describing current relations with India in interview, he said, “We have a long and complicated history with India. Unfortunately, India today is a changed India. It is no longer secular India promised by its founding fathers for all its citizens.” “It is increasingly becoming a Hindu-supremacist India at expense of its Christian and Muslim minorities and that’s not sort of Muslim minorities within India but unfortunately in disputed region of Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK).” He referred to August 2019 move when Indian government revoked special status of IIOJK and said these recent steps and actions have left very little space for Pakistan to engage.

“Unilateral illegal actions of August 2019 where attempts to undermine resolution of United Nations. United Nations Security Council and change boundaries of this disputed territory and going a step further and attempting to change Muslim majority in Indian Occupied Jammu and Kashmir into a minority in their own land,” he said. Bilawal added India’s “absolutely racist” and “Islamophobic” policy has caused reaction not only within Kashmir but all across India.

PPP Chairman added that Muslim minority in India is feeling persecuted and insecure. He said that this is an active policy of state and this is how government of India are treating their own Muslim citizens and that one can only imagine how they are treating Muslims of Pakistan and IIOJK. Bilawal said that he believes younger generation on both sides wants to see countries living in peace. Talking about unprecedented flooding in Pakistan, he said we are still in state of an active disaster and “scale of climate catastrophe in Pakistan is truly apocalyptic”.

Published in The Daily National Courier, September, 23 2022

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