Permanent Representative of India to the United Nations, Parvathaneni Harish addresses a UNSC meeting. File
| Photo Credit: ANI
India called out Pakistan’s “long-tainted” record of genocidal acts, telling the U.N. Security Council that the country’s inhuman conduct reflects its attempts over decades to externalise internal failures through acts of violence within and beyond its border.
Speaking at the Annual UNSC Open Debate on ‘Protection of civilians in armed conflict’ on Wednesday (May 20, 2026), India’s Permanent Representative to the U.N. Ambassador Harish Parvathaneni said, “It is ironic that Pakistan, with its long-tainted record of genocidal acts, has chosen to refer to issues that are strictly internal to India.”
Mr. Parvathaneni’s remarks came after Pakistan’s representative raised the issue of Jammu and Kashmir at the debate.
Strikes on Afghanistan
Raising the issue of Pakistan’s strikes on Afghanistan earlier this year, he said, “The world has not forgotten that it was during the holy month of Ramadan in March this year, at a time of peace, reflection, and mercy, that Pakistan conducted a barbaric airstrike on the Omid Addiction Treatment Hospital in Kabul.”
He said that according to UNAMA (United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan), “this cowardly and unconscionable act of violence claimed the lives of 269 civilians and injured a further 122 in a facility which can by no means be justified as a military target.”
Mr. Parvathaneni added that it is “hypocritical” of Pakistan to espouse high principles of international law while “targeting innocent civilians in the dark.”
The air strikes by Pakistan occurred at the conclusion of tarawih evening prayers, when numerous patients were leaving the masjid, as per UNAMA.
Over 94,000 people were assessed as displaced due to cross-border armed violence perpetrated against Afghan civilians, according to UNAMA.
He said that such heinous acts of aggression by Pakistan should not come as a surprise from a country that “bombs its own people and conducts systematic genocide.”
Operation Searchlight
Mr. Parvathaneni said that Pakistan sanctioned the systematic campaign of genocidal mass rape of 400,000 women citizens by its own army during Operation Searchlight in 1971.
Operation Searchlight was the codename the Pakistani Army used for its action against the Bangladeshi nationalist movement in East Pakistan, now Bangladesh, in March 1971.
“Such inhuman conduct reflects Pakistan’s repeated attempts over decades to externalise internal failures through increasingly desperate acts of violence both within and beyond its borders. With no faith, no law, and no morality, the world can see through Pakistan’s propaganda,” he said.
Published – May 21, 2026 07:29 am IST
