We will fight till the end: PM Khan warns India at UNGA speech

NEW YORK: Prime Minister Imran Khan warned the international community and India, on Friday, that Pakistan will fight to the end if faced by war.

The prime minister made his maiden address to the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA). Khan divided his speech into four parts–Climate change, money laundering, Islamophobia and the issue of Indian-occupied Kashmir.

Khan said that his Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government, in its last tenure, had planted a billion trees and now it aimed to plant 10 billion trees. Khan urged the UN to hold accountable the countries who were contributing massively to global warming.

He said that the West should not create tax heavens where billions in looted money were being parked in banks.
“This creates a gulf between the rich and the poor. The poor are getting poorer and the rich are getting richer,” he said.

Khan said that it was impossible for Pakistan to spend on human development if billions of dollars of the country was siphoned off and parked in banks across the western world.

He then asked the West to tone down the anti-Muslim rhetoric and said that after 9/11, Islamophobia had increased in the developed countries.

“A woman can take off her clothes but she cannot wear the hijab,” he said. “This is a problem in several countries in the world. The hijab is looked upon as a weapon.”

Prime Minister Khan spoke out against the defamation of Holy Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) by certain elements in the West.

“Please do not use freedom of speech to hurt us,” he said. “Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) lives in our hearts. When you insult him, you give us pain. Anyone knows the physical pain is nothing compared to the pain of the heart,” he added.

Khan said that it was also the fault of the Muslim community who had not told the West that there was only one Islam.

“There’s only one Islam–the one given to us by Prophet Muhammad (PBUH). There is not extremist Islam or moderate or enlightened Islam. It’s just Islam,” he added.

The prime minister also talked about occupied Kashmir in the end and slammed Modi for holding eight million people under siege.

“I know that if eight million animals were locked up in the UK, there would be an outcry,” he said. “These are human beings. They’re being treated worse than animals,” he added.

Prime Minister Khan said that the Indian armed forces were raping Kashmiri women and detaining their children illegally.

“Thirteen thousand Kashmiri boys have been picked up and the world is watching silently,” he said.
Khan said that if faced with war as the only option, Pakistan would fight till the end.

“I ask myself this question. What will we, a nation seven times smaller than its neighbour, do if faced with conventional warfare? I believe in ‘There is no God but Allah’, we will fight to the every end,” he said, as the audience clapped. “Let me tell the world–when a nuclear war takes place, it has implications beyond the borders, for the rest of the world,” he added.

Prime Minister Khan said that the UN had guaranteed the people of Kashmir the right of self-determination. He said that now was the time for the world to stop appeasing Modi and hold him accountable.

“We demand India lift the illegal siege in Kashmir, at once,” he said.