[Music] performance [Applause] star. Good to see you all. I'll say a few words in English if that's okay.
Is that acceptable? I just wanted to I just wanted to first of all thank you all for coming in such large numbers to greet my colleagues and myself. We have come as part of a mission to five countries.
Our honorable prime minister has sent seven parliamentary delegations to different regions of the world. Others have gone to other countries. We started in New York with a visit to the September 11th memorial.
Then we traveled to Guyana for a two-day visit. We are now in Panama for a two-day visit. Then we go to Colombia for a two-day visit.
Thereafter to Brazilia where we have two and a half days because it's also a Sunday in between. And then we go to the United States to Washington DC. And the purpose of our mission is to convey a message to each of the countries that we are going to.
And I should mention to all of you that we represent very many different parties. Even within the seven members of my delegation, there are four parties represented. Uh we have I'm sorry, five parties represented amongst the members of my delegation.
And then I should mention to you that we also come from all parts of the country. Unfortunately, Gujarati. I do want to say to you nonetheless that we are all here from different backgrounds, different states, different political parties but united in the same message and that is a [Applause] message and that is a message on behalf of the people of India to all of you living here in Panama that we will not accept accept anymore the constant outrages of terrorism inflicted upon our people.
We have suffered attack after attack for almost four decades now. Going back from the first attacks in Kashmir in 1989 onwards, we have seen repeated outrages, civilian victims. Most of you will remember the horrors of Mumbai in 2008.
What we call 2611 because it happened on 26th November but went on for 3 days in which 170 people were killed. Many of you will remember many other examples. I myself wrote an article where I found about 15 examples since 2001 alone.
It is just not acceptable for us to continue to bear the pain, the grief, the wounds, the losses and then merely go and tell the international community, look what is happening to us. Please help us. Please put pressure on the perpetrators to actually identify and prosecute the criminals.
None of that has been happening despite our best efforts. After Mumbai, we had all the evidence. We even captured one of the terrorists alive.
Very brave policeman gave his life to capture Admal Kasam alive. He was identified. His home, his address, his village in Pakistan were identified.
Not only India but western intelligence agencies had recordings of the chilling voice of the Pakistani cold-blooded handler giving daily minute-by-minute instructions to the killers in Mumbai while the killings were going on. All the evidence was collected. Dossiers were established.
What happened? Has a single person behind this outrage been prosecuted, let alone convicted? The answer is no.
Sadly, Pakistan has chosen a policy of enabling terror and not just enabling but creating terrorist establishments, financing them, training terrorists, equipping them. There have been examples in the last 20 years of attacks in New York, in London, in Madrid, in so many different parts of the world which have been blamed provably on Pakistani terrorists or terrorists trained in Pakistan and brought to these countries. This is the sad reality we are facing today.
We have no quarrel with the people of Pakistan. We would love to live in peace. As you know, India is proud of its economic success story.
In the last couple of decades, we have been growing and prospering as a country. We have been trying to pull our people out of poverty. We have been trying to develop our technology, our tech stack so that we can enter the 21st century as a proud and confident leading country in the world.
We are already the fourth largest economy in dollar terms. By another 10 years or so, we should be even the third largest economy. We are already that in purchasing power parity terms.
So we are a growing prosperous country. We don't want to be distracted by wars, conflicts and terror. We want to focus on growth, on prosperity, on a better life for our people.
Unfortunately, our desire to just be left alone is not reciprocated by our friends on the other side of the border. They have chosen repeatedly to attack us because they believe that they want territory which they do not control, which we control, which is it is part of the sovereign borders of United India and we are not going to give it to them even if we have to pay the price that we have repeatedly been paying. But what has changed in recent years is that the terrorists have also realized they will have a price to pay.
On that let there be no doubt. When for the first time India breached the line of control between India and Pakistan to conduct a surgical strike on a terror base, a launchpad, the Urri strike in September 2015. That was already something we had not done before.
Even during the Cargill war, we had not crossed the line of control in Uri. We did. Then came the attack in Pulama in January 2019.
This time we crossed not only the line of control, we crossed the international border and we struck a terrorist headquarters in Balakot. This time we have gone beyond both of those. We have struck, we have not only gone beyond the line of control and the international border.
We have struck at the Punjabi heartland of Pakistan by hitting terror bases, training centers, terror headquarters in nine places in both Pakistan and Pakistan in both Punjab and Pakistan occupied Kashmir. And let me say to you, this is going to be the new normal. Our prime minister has made it very clear operation Sindur was necessary because these terrorists came and wiped the Sindur off the foreheads of 26 women by depriving them of their husbands and father their their their married lives.
In fact, there were some women who cried out, "The terrorists, kill me too. " And they said, "No, go back. Tell what happened to you.
" We heard, we heard their cries. And India decided that the color of the synindul that vermilion color on the forehead of our women will also match the color of the blood of the killers, the perpetrators, the attackers. [Applause] India is not a wararmongering state.
Even when we conducted those attacks, the first nine terror base attacks, our government said very clearly without any doubt that we are not looking for any escalation. These were carefully precisely calibrated strikes. We hit only terror bases.
We hit no military facilities of Pakistan, no government facilities, no civilian homes. Very precise targeting meant that even within the compounds of Lashkar and Jesa Muhammad we hit specific buildings and we did so at night between 105 and 1:30 at night. Why?
Because we didn't want to have too much of collateral damage. At a different time during the day there might have been a lot of civilians around. We didn't want their lives to be hurt.
Think how much thought has gone into this. We wanted to send a message, a very clear message. And the target was not all the people of Pakistan.
It was not even the government of Pakistan. The target was only the terrorists and their enablers. Sadly, Pakistan chose to respond.
They shelled indiscriminately. Artillery shells flying across the border. Punch Rajuri.
And sadly, we all know this. 19 of our fellow citizens were killed in the Pakistani shelling in Punchalon. 59 were hospitalized with grievous injuries.
Where did the shells sit? When we attacked, we attacked terror bases. When they attacked, they attacked the Gurudara.
They attacked the nuns, converts, the commonalites of mother Mary. They attacked civilian homes. They attacked civilian vehicles.
That is the way the difference between how we behaved and how our neighbors chose to respond. What did we do next? We said we will if you hit us, we will hit you back and we will hit you back harder.
And we did. They sent us drones, missiles. Our air defenses blocked them and we hit very precisely 11 military targets on the night of the 9th and 10th of May.
You can see satellite pictures. You can see satellite pictures are on the internet where specific bomb craters can be seen on the runways of the major Pakistan air bases. Raheem Yar Khan air base air marshal Nurh Khan air base one of them in the chakla Chaklala base was 1 and a half kilometers only from the military headquarters GHQ Rahul Pindi the message is very clear we have the capacity to target you where it will hurt you if you stop we stop if you don't stop watch out for what's coming next they finally chose to stop on the 10th of May our director general military operations got on call in the morning.
They set up a proper dialogue at 3:30 in the afternoon and at 3:30 their director general of military operations told ours we want to stop firing. Our general said, "Of course, we didn't want to start the firing. In any case, you are the one who has been attacking us.
You stop, we stop. " And at 5:00 p. m.
, a cessation of firing was inaugurated. That was now 2 weeks ago, little more than 2 weeks ago. two and a half weeks ago and there is more or less calm on the border.
This is why at this time our government has requested all of us to come and explain to government leaders in these countries to parliamentarians to opinion makers and where possible to the diaspora what our thinking was why we did what we did and to explain to you why we need your sympathetic understanding and support and I'm very pleased to say that so Far we have got it in Guyana. We met the president, the vice president who's himself the former president, the prime minister, a dozen members of the cabinet, the speaker of the national assembly and they all told us unconditionally that they understand and they support India's fight against terrorism. Today in Panama, we went to the National Assembly.
We met the president da Caseda and she gave us the same message. In fact when we were parting at the end of the discussion I presented on behalf of the people of India a Kashmiri shawl to her to remind her that is from Kashmir that this tragedy started. And what did she say in reply?
She gave me a symbol, a Panameanian warrior symbol and she said, "My people of Panama, encourage all of you in India to fight like warriors against [Applause] terrorism. That is what we are doing. That is what we are going to continue to do.
And let me say to you all, we know the buildings we've destroyed can be rebuilt. We know that terrorism does not disappear with one night of strikes. We know there is an entire enabling ecosystem in Pakistan to create this terror infrastructure to train, arm, guide, equip and direct these people to come and do terror.
It is they who must change. We have seen even the United Nations Security Council said that it is not enough to bring the terrorists to justice but those who finance them, those who direct them must also be made accountable. We all know who those are.
That is the military establishment of the deep state of Pakistan. And we say to you, understanding this means being prepared that this may happen again. But we are telling you in advance if it happens again be prepared for worse to happen to them.
This is the message we are giving. We are explaining what happened. We are seeking sympathetic understanding but we are saying we are not going to tolerate anymore.
If it happens again there will be worse to come. And that warning we give in advance so that people understand. I repeat, we do not want war.
Our actions were not the first salvo intended for a long drawn out conflict. We just want to be left alone. We want to grow, develop, look after the well-being of our people.
We are saying to Pakistan and to the people who run that country, you leave us alone, we'll leave you alone. But you strike us, be prepared that we will strike back. That is the message with those words.
I want to thank you all once again, the people of Panama for having come here. It is such a matter of pride for us to know that the Indian community has been in this country for so long, has done so well, has thrived in so many different ways in across many sectors of the Panameanian economy and it gives me so much a pleasure that today you invited us to this beautiful temple you have built here. uh all of us and by the way we represent three different religions in our group but we all came to the temple and we were happy to receive the blessings of the [Applause] Lord and those blessings we take back to the people of India to our country to those who really believe in the principles of Shanti but also will never abandon the principles of Shi.
We will stay strong. Stay with us. God bless you all.
