India criticises UN rapporteur for bias in reporting on funerals, ignoring gravity of terrorism

United Nations: India slammed the special rapporteur (SR) for religious freedom for bias in reporting on burials in India and failing to take into account the gravity of terrorism.

"Deriving political mileage out of people's pain and loss should not be a topic that SRs should base relevance on", Bhavika Mangalanandan, a first secretary in India's UN Mission, said on Thursday.

"We are surprised that the fervent advocacy for the rights of terrorists who violate the most sacred right of humans, the right to life, does not similarly extend to the victims of terrorism," she said.

"A terrorist not only kills innocent people, but damages the psyche of a nation", she said.

At the General Assembly's Third Committee, which deals with humanitarian affairs, Mangalanandan was responding to a report by Nazila Ghanea, the special rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief, on "Freedom of Religion or Belief and Funeral Rights in Exceptional Circumstances".

The report said the bodies of persons killed in security operations in Kashmir were not returned to their families and were buried in remote areas.

It also asserted that restrictions were placed on some persons killed during the agitation against the Citizenship Amendment Act by authorities, citing “law and order” concerns.

Ghanea is a professor of international human rights law at Oxford University. Rapporteurs are appointed by the Human Rights Council and not paid by the UN and work independently of it.

Mangalanandan criticised her for bias against the Global South in how she reported only on burials there during the Covid pandemic, while remaining silent about what went on in the industrialised nations.

"As per the report, all discrimination and wrong practices during Covid-19 supposedly took place only in the Global South," Mangalanandan said.

"What benefit does the report derive by not mentioning similar tragic situations in the developed world?" she asked. For example, in New York City, thousands of bodies of people who died of Covid-19 were thrown into mass graves on an isolated island off the city. There is no mention of such incidents in the report.

Manglanandan also responded to Pakistani allegations during the meeting, calling them ironic.

"It is deeply ironic that a state that did not even accept the bodies of its own soldiers who were killed in combat in 1999 in Kargil unabashedly speaks with fervour on faith, religious freedom and burials", she said.

"It was the Indian Army who buried a number of Pakistani soldiers with military honours and in accordance with Islamic rites," she said.

Instead of obsessing about India, Islamabad should direct its attention to what is happening in the part of Kashmir it illegally occupies, she said.

Minorities' rights are shrinking, and they are regularly abused in Pakistan, she said.

"A state that cannot ensure the safety of its own minorities has no standing to lecture India," she said.

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