China has done it several times in the past and it does it again. China has blocked the proposal declaring Sajid Mir, who is a Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorist wanted for his involvement in the 26/11 Mumbai attack as a “Global terrorist”, at the UN.
The proposal was moved by the US and co-designated by India seeking to blacklist Mir under the 1267 Al-Qaeda Sanctions Committee of the United States Security Council (UNSC). Under this, Mir would have been subjected to asset freeze, travel ban and arms embargo.
India gives a befitting reply
India’s response to this came in the form of a statement read out by joint secretary Prakash Gupta at a high-level conference on counter-terrorism at the United Nations General Assembly.
In a strongly worded statement, Prakash Gupta said that if efforts to ban terrorists fail due to “petty geopolitical interest”, then we really do not have the genuine political will to sincerely fight this challenge of terrorism and that there is “something genuinely wrong with the global counter-terrorism architecture”.
India said we first need to address the most critical gap which is double standards and this self-defeating justification of good versus bad terrorists. A terror act is a terror act. Mr. Gupta also played a brief audio clip of Mir in which he is heard directing terrorists in Urdu during the Mumbai attack.
India raised a tough question in front of the UN asking if we can afford genuine listing proposals to be blocked, in this age of accountability and transparency, without giving proper reasons for the same. It also asks if we can allow for the submission of proposals anonymously.
China is a habitual offender
China is a habitual offender when it comes to these proposals designating Pakistan-based terrorists by the UNSC’s sanctions committee. India has in the past as well questioned China’s use of this “technical hold” to block the listing of several terrorists. It first puts a technical hold on these proposals using its veto and in the next stage blocks them altogether.
China had blocked a move to designate Sajid Mir last year in September as well. China in the past has blocked the proposals for listing Shahid Mahmood and Talha Saeed of Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and Abdul Rauf Asghar of Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM). In 2019, China was forced to lift its hold on Masood Azhar some weeks after the Pulwama attack allowing his designation after almost a decade of attempts.
These technical holds come into the picture when a member state wants to see more information on the entity sought to be sanctioned. But with enough information, including that from Pakistan, on Sajid Mir and his role in the 2008 Mumbai attack, this move from China merely seems to be a tactical delay like it was in the case of Masood Azhar.
In his statement, Mr. Gupta said that India has fought against terrorists practically on a daily basis and that our perspectives come from hardcore frontline experiences from the battles we fought against terrorists. “Justice still continues to elude the victims of the Mumbai terror attack”, he said.
