Pakistan at UNGA: Arundhati Roy dubs all governments 'opportunists' after Pakistan uses her statement to slam India

The 1997 Man Booker Prize winning author Arundhati Roy launched a veiled attack on Pakistan by calling all governments ‘opportunists.’  

Roy made this statement after Pakistan’s Permanent Representative to the UN Maleeha Lodhi while addressing United Nations General Assembly used a quote made by her in 2015. 

Roy had said in a statement that the "whole population of Dalits, Adivasis, Muslims, and Christians are being forced to live in terror." 

Lodhi was replying to India foreign minister Sushma Swaraj’s hard-hitting speech against Pakistan made on Saturday. 

“Much of what is in the air in India now is pure terror, in Kashmir, in other places,” Lodhi quoted Roy's statement from an article she had written for the Indian Express during the 'Award Vapsi' campaign in 2015.

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"All governments and their spokespersons are opportunistic. That cannot become a reason for writers and journalists not to write what they have to write," she told Outlook.

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Arundhati Roy had returned her National Award in 2015 as part of what she called an "unparalleled political movement against ideological viciousness" which was used by Lodhi in her speech who cited Roy’s quotes to condemn the Indian government.