Pakistan condemns India’s state-sponsored spying operations

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan on Friday condemned in strongest possible terms India’s state-sponsored, continuing and widespread surveillance and spying operations in clear breach of global norms of responsible state behaviour.

“We have noted with serious concern [the] recent international media reports exposing [the] Indian government’s organised spying operations against its own citizens, foreigners, as well as Prime Minister Imran Khan, using an Israeli origin spyware,” Foreign Office spokesperson Zahid Hafeez Chaudhri said.

Responding to media queries regarding India’s use of Israeli spyware – Pegasus – to hack the phones and computers of journalists, judges, diplomats, government officials, rights activists, and global leaders, including Prime Minister Imran Khan, the spokesperson said keeping a clandestine tab on dissenting voices was a longstanding textbook ploy of the RSS-BJP regime to commit human rights atrocities in the Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK) and peddle disinformation against Pakistan.

The world has seen the true face of the so-called Indian ‘democracy’ when the reports of the EU Disinfo Lab, Indian Chronicle, surfaced earlier last year, he added.

The spokesperson also said: “We are closely following these revelations and will bring the Indian abuses to the attention of appropriate global platforms.”

“In view of the gravity of these reports, we call on the relevant UN bodies to thoroughly investigate the matter, bring the facts to light, and hold the Indian perpetrators to account,” he added.