After the revocation of Article 370, Imran Khan, the leader of reforms in Pakistan, was expected to address the issue of the world’s biggest human rights violation at the UNGA forum. As a result, he fulfilled the expectations. He mainly started his speech to address four important points. Firstly, he began with the issue of climate change and mentioned his efforts to resolve it. For that, he referred to the Billion Tree project and also taunted India of killing ten trees. Secondly, he shifted the topic towards Money Laundering and discussed its negative impacts on the economy of poor countries. With this point, he again mentioned his campaign against corruption and how other political leaders of Pakistan had looted money. By critically analyzing this point, I found such examples shouldn’t be discussed on such a big platform as it was completely unnecessary to mention. After that, he discussed an important problem regarding Islamophobia and Muslims being negatively portrayed all around the world especially the West. He pointed to the cases of insulting cartoons made by the West in the name of freedom of expression and said that it badly hurts the sentiments of Muslim Ummah.
He just can’t be appreciated enough for the way he stood up to speak about Islamophobia on a world biggest stage. He represented the whole Muslim Ummah just as an Islamic world leader would do. He tried his best to convey a peaceful message in the name of Islam. Undoubtedly, it was the strongest point of his speech.
In his last point, Khan turned to an ongoing issue of Kashmir between India and Pakistan which can be referred to as the biggest human rights violation in the world’s history. He discoursed how Pakistan played its positive part by making uncountable sacrifices for peace during the War on terror. Still, the nation was accused of providing safe havens to terrorists by none other than India. Supporting this point, he also invites UN observers to visit Pakistan and analyze themselves the right situation. Moreover, he took this point to Pulwama even further by discussing his attempts to normalize Indo-Pak relations. He also stated India’s aggressive war planning regarding 26th Feb and our peace gesture in return to release Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman. Though, this step was taken by India as Pakistan’s weakness and a sign of fear.
He took the world into history and showed them the racist face of RSS by referring them to Hitler and Mussolini. The most courageous act done by any Prime Minister on this world’s stage is to relate another political leader as a terrorist and yes, Khan did that. He told the world that Narendra Modi is a leader of this terrorist organization and was responsible for the killing of Muslims in Gujrat back in 2002.
The way he has shown bravery and courage to speak about India’s brutalities in Kashmir was more than commendable. He criticized the world’s silence over this issue and reminded them that Kashmiris are real human beings and not animals. Furthermore, he also warned the world about the Kashmir’s genocide and the bloodbath at the hands of 900.000 Indian troops deployed in Kashmir.
Moreover, he mentioned that if there exists any future war between India and Pakistan, no matter we are 7 times smaller than our neighbour, ‘La ilaha ill-Allah’, we will still fight and never surrender. He made the world realize that we are not a weak nation. No matter if we are not stable in terms of economy or nuclear power, we will fight for our freedom. We will fight for Islam. He truly became the voice of every single Muslim in our country against India’s aggression.
An impressive speech like such has never been delivered before by any Muslim leader at UNGA that could catch the world’s eye. However, with my critical evaluation, this was not enough in favour of Kashmir. He should have emphasized more on Kashmir’s right to self-determination. Even this point was also raised by Kashmir’s Ambassador. As a truly patriotic Pakistani with having my origins from Kashmir, I believe, only words are not enough. We have to do much more than just an impressive speech.
Inshaa Allah, Kashmir Banega Pakistan.
