India has responded sharply to Pakistan government’s allegations of discrimination against Muslims, insisting that it was the Imran Khan government’s effort to divert attention from Islamabad’s poor way of handling its internal affairs.
This isn’t the first time that India has panned Pakistan during the humanitarian crisis due to Covid-19 that has killed more than 1.5 lakh people across the world and infected over two million. In recent weeks, India has also noted renewed attempts by Pakistan-backed terrorists groups to infiltrate into India.
Here are five such incidents during the Covid-19 crisis:
April 19, 2020: The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) slammed the remarks made by Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan where he accused the government in India of discriminating against the Muslims. The MEA said such remarks were an attempt to shift focus from Islamabad’s “abysmal handling” of its internal affairs. Khan had compared the Indian government’s treatment of Muslims to “what Nazis did to Jews in Germany”.
April 17, 2020: Army Chief General MM Naravane said that during such time when India is sending is medical teams and exporting medicines to the world to battle coronavirus, Pakistan is exporting terror. “It is unfortunate that while the world has got together to fight the Covid-19 pandemic, our neighbour has resorted to firing heavy calibre artillery and killing of innocent people, including an eight-year-old boy to garner international attention,” he said during his visit to the forward posts in Jammu and Kashmir. His remarks came after a series of ceasefire violation incidents, especially in the Keran sector of the union territory in which eight civilians and five soldiers were killed in two weeks.
April 10, 2020: India took a jibe at Pakistan over its opposition to New Delhi’s leadership in dealing with the crisis in SAARC region. New Delhi said the degree of seriousness of each member nation of the SAARC in collectively fighting the coronavirus pandemic can be gauged by their behaviour. The reaction came a day after Pakistan pledged to contribute US $3 million to the SAARC Coronavirus Emergency Fund as proposed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi but demanded that any initiative to deal with the situation must be brought under the bloc’s framework.
April 4, 2020: India once against hit out at Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan for commenting on domicile rules for Kammu and Kashmir, saying repeated attempts to interfere in India’s internal affairs will not make its “untenable” claims acceptable. In its response, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said that Pakistan has no locus standi whatsoever on any aspect pertaining to it. Khan had criticised India’s new domicile rules for Jammu and Kashmir, calling them an attempt to alter the demography of the union territory.
March 16, 2020: India slammed Pakistan for raising the Kashmir issue during a video conference between SAARC countries to discuss ways to tackle the deadly coronavirus disease Covid-19. The government said that Pakistan’s attempts to politicise a humanitarian issue by its unwarranted statement on Kashmir during the video conference on coronavirus reflected very poorly on it. Speaking further on the SAARC emergency fund, the MEA said: “Where India is concerned, the commitment made by the Prime Minister is today in an advanced stage of implementation. Assistance in material and services has been extended to Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Maldives, Nepal and Sri Lanka. These SAARC countries have also made early commitments to the fund.”
