Shashi Tharoor stressed global solidarity against terrorism during a visit to New York. He asserted that India, like the US, will not remain silent in the face of such attacks.
Shashi Tharoor, who arrived in the United States as the leader of the all-party delegation, on Sunday said India will not be sitting quietly against the forces of evil.
Delivering his remarks while speaking to the media outside the 9/11 Memorial in New York City, the Congress MP also called on the global community to stand together with mutual solidarity and strength against the menace of terrorism.
Referring to the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Centre in the US, Tharoor said that the visit to the memorial is a solemn reminder of how, just like the US, India has been subjected to terrorism.
“We in India have been subject to the same wounds that you are seeing the scars of today in this very moving memorial. We have come in a spirit of solidarity, we have come at the same time on a mission,” Tharoor said.
The delegation, which is presently in the United States, will also visit Guyana, Panama, Brazil, and Colombia.
“In these countries, we are hoping to be able to explain to the world how important it is for all of us to stand together against the scourge of terrorism. Just as the US showed such resolution and determination in the wake of 9/11, so too our country has stood up against the forces of evil who attacked us on April 22,” he said.
“We hope that a lesson has been learned by those who perpetrated this attack and by those who finance, train, equip, and direct them, but we want to communicate to the world that we will not be sitting quietly if this is repeated.”
“We want the world to understand that this is not a time for indifference, but for mutual strength and mutual solidarity, so that we can all unitedly stand up for the values that the United States has always cherished – the values of democracy, of human freedom, of diversity, of coexistence of people of different communities, none of which sadly is on the agenda of those who conducted such attacks,” he added.
WHAT SHASHI THAROOR TOLD THE CONSULATE
After paying tribute at the 9/11 memorial, Tharoor, during an interaction at the Consulate, Congress in New York, said, “We came both as a reminder that this is a shared problem, but also out of a spirit of solidarity with the victims, who included Indians. It is a global problem, we must fight it unitedly.”
Speaking about how India has been subjected to terror acts time and again, Tharoor underlined that “Perpetrators of terror should indeed be brought to justice, and we are not going to stop our hunt for those who did this latest atrocity”.
He said, “We need to think about where these people are based, where they have safe havens, where they are trained, equipped, financed, guided, armed, and often directly directed. To perpetrate these horrors, and they too should be accountable for what they have been doing.”
“We are determined now that there’s got to be a new bottom line to this. We have tried everything, an international dossier, complaints… everything has been tried. Pakistan has remained in denial, there has been absolutely no conviction, no serious criminal prosecution, no attempt to dismantle the terror infrastructure in that country, and the persistence of safe havens,” Tharoor said.
“You (Pakistan) do this, you are going to get this back, and we have demonstrated with this Operation (Operation Sindoor) that we can do it with a degree of precision,” Tharoor mentioned.
Speaking further, the Congress MP said, “Some people decided that they would want to attack that process of normalisation (in Jammu and Kashmir), second to undermine the narrative, as well as the prosperity of the people of Kashmir. Third, by doing so in an atrocious manner, that is, it was not just a terrorist attack of somebody incriminating going on people with a bomb. It was a bunch of people going around identifying the religions of the people before them and killing them on that basis, which was clearly intended to provoke a backlash in the rest of India, since the victims were overwhelmingly Hindu.”
“The message was very clear that there was a malign intent, India, sadly, had no reason to doubt where it came from,” he said.