India Rebukes Pakistan at UN: Harish Highlights 1971 Genocide, Defends Women’s Peace Role

India’s Permanent Representative Parvathaneni Harish eviscerated Pakistan as a nation that “bombs its own people” and orchestrated a “systematic genocide” including the mass rape of up to 400,000 Bengali women during the 1971 Operation Searchlight, turning the open debate on “Women, Peace and Security” into a stark reckoning with historical atrocities.

Harish’s unflinching remarks came as a direct counterpunch to Pakistan’s delegate, who invoked Jammu and Kashmir to decry the exclusion of “Kashmiri women” from the agenda, claiming it “erases its legitimacy.” Dismissing the rhetoric as a “delusional tirade,” Harish retorted: “A country that bombs its own people, conducts systematic genocide, can only attempt to distract the world with misdirection and hyperbole.” He spotlighted Operation Searchlight—the Pakistani army’s brutal crackdown launched on March 25, 1971, in then-East Pakistan—which triggered the Bangladesh genocide, killing between 300,000 and 3 million Bengalis and forcing 10 million refugees into India. The operation, code-named to crush Bengali nationalism after the Awami League’s electoral sweep, unleashed widespread civilian massacres, targeted killings of intellectuals, and a campaign of genocidal rape that left an indelible scar on the region’s women.

Drawing from declassified accounts and survivor testimonies, Harish evoked the horrors: Pakistani forces, under General Tikka Khan—the infamous “Butcher of Bengal”—systematically targeted Bengali women, with estimates from UN observers and historians like Geoffrey Davis pegging victims at 200,000 to 400,000. These assaults, often in villages and camps, resulted in thousands of pregnancies, forced abortions, infanticides, suicides, and lifelong stigmatization, as documented in reports from the International Commission of Jurists and Bangladeshi war crimes tribunals. “Pakistan sanctioned a genocidal mass rape of 400,000 women citizens by its own army,” Harish thundered, underscoring how such state-sponsored violence undermines any moral authority on women’s peace issues.

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The envoy, addressing a session chaired by Russia, pivoted to India’s exemplary record, boasting an “unblemished” commitment to the Women, Peace and Security agenda. He lauded India’s pioneering role in UN peacekeeping, deploying women officers as early as the 1960s in Congo—among the first such instances globally. “What distinguishes India’s peacekeeping legacy is our recognition of women as indispensable agents of peace,” Harish affirmed, noting the nation’s troop contributions have consistently prioritized gender-sensitive operations to combat sexual exploitation and enhance mission efficacy.

In a nod to recent initiatives, Harish highlighted India’s February 2025 International Conference on Women Peacekeepers from the Global South, which convened delegates from 35 nations to tackle evolving threats like technology integration and abuse prevention. “This was not mere discussion but a blueprint for amplifying women’s roles in future missions,” he said, positioning India as a mentor to Global South partners in forging collective solutions.

Pakistan’s annual jabs at Kashmir, Harish implied, mask its own failures, with the world “seeing through the propaganda.” As the debate underscored the agenda’s universality, India reaffirmed its resolve to advance women’s empowerment amid conflict, offering expertise to allies while rejecting hypocrisy from those with bloodied histories. The exchange, amid escalating South Asian tensions, serves as a reminder that true peace advocacy demands accountability for past sins, not deflection. With the UNSC grappling with global hotspots from Ukraine to Gaza, Harish’s words resonate as a call for integrity in addressing women’s roles in fragile peacebuilding.

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