A Hazara asylum seeker watched his sister drown when their boat sank en route to Australia, reports Indonesia correspondent Michael Bachelard on Friday.
Friday, August 31, 2012
Ships ignored survivors' pleas
A Hazara asylum seeker watched his sister drown when their boat sank en route to Australia, reports Indonesia correspondent Michael Bachelard on Friday.
‘Talebanisation on the rise in Balochistan’
Rehan Siddiqui / 1 September 2012
KARACHI — The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) has claimed that Talebanisation was growing in the country’s largest and troubled Balochistan province and its capital Quetta has become a haven for militants.
The latest report by the HRCP on Balochistan came after a mission visited the province from May 15 to 19 to assess the impact of recent measures taken by the government with respect to the province, and to hear suggestions from stakeholders on a way out of the crisis.
“Talebanisation is growing in several areas and, unlike in the past, religious fanaticism is not merely being exported to the province from elsewhere — it is now being bred in Balochistan,” the report said.
It also reported that a growing network of seminaries has contributed to inflame sectarian tensions and militant training camps are reported in the province while the government’s strategy to quell the unrest in the province has largely failed.
The mission, during its stay in Balochistan, met members of the executive, representatives of political parties, civil society organisations, relatives of missing persons, religious and ethnic minority communities, businessmen, lawyers, journalists, teachers, students and senior government officials.
According to the report, the situation in Balochistan, in many fundamental respects, has not changed since HRCP’s last fact-finding mission to the province in 2011. Enforced disappearances continue in the province as does the dumping of bodies and impunity for perpetrators.
Frontier Corps and intelligence agencies are generally believed to be involved in enforced disappearance; in some cases their involvement had been proved beyond doubt, the report says.
Target killings and crime on the basis of religious and ethnic identity has grown, the report says, adding that the continued persecution of the Hazaras is as ruthless as it is unprecedented.
The report also pointed out that there is a popular feeling that the national media has abandoned Balochistan and has not given the province adequate coverage and journalists in the field feel threatened from the security forces, militants and insurgents.
news@khaleejtimes.com
KARACHI — The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) has claimed that Talebanisation was growing in the country’s largest and troubled Balochistan province and its capital Quetta has become a haven for militants.
The latest report by the HRCP on Balochistan came after a mission visited the province from May 15 to 19 to assess the impact of recent measures taken by the government with respect to the province, and to hear suggestions from stakeholders on a way out of the crisis.
“Talebanisation is growing in several areas and, unlike in the past, religious fanaticism is not merely being exported to the province from elsewhere — it is now being bred in Balochistan,” the report said.
It also reported that a growing network of seminaries has contributed to inflame sectarian tensions and militant training camps are reported in the province while the government’s strategy to quell the unrest in the province has largely failed.
The mission, during its stay in Balochistan, met members of the executive, representatives of political parties, civil society organisations, relatives of missing persons, religious and ethnic minority communities, businessmen, lawyers, journalists, teachers, students and senior government officials.
According to the report, the situation in Balochistan, in many fundamental respects, has not changed since HRCP’s last fact-finding mission to the province in 2011. Enforced disappearances continue in the province as does the dumping of bodies and impunity for perpetrators.
Frontier Corps and intelligence agencies are generally believed to be involved in enforced disappearance; in some cases their involvement had been proved beyond doubt, the report says.
Target killings and crime on the basis of religious and ethnic identity has grown, the report says, adding that the continued persecution of the Hazaras is as ruthless as it is unprecedented.
The report also pointed out that there is a popular feeling that the national media has abandoned Balochistan and has not given the province adequate coverage and journalists in the field feel threatened from the security forces, militants and insurgents.
news@khaleejtimes.com
Thursday, August 30, 2012
SECOND EDITORIAL: What a miscarriage of justice
How sad that such a senseless blowback of the Shia-Sunni schism of millennia should fall so violently on Balochistan’s Hazara, a peaceful, harmless community of mosty mid and low-level workers with no history of quarrel with the outside world. And how cruel that even the most blatant, disgusting slaughter of these passive people should fail to so much as register at the centre of power in Islamabad, a fitting response being a far thing.
Considering that this everyday murder of innocent Hazara, often women and children, is mostly duly claimed by extremist organisations created for just such purposes, the government’s continued silence is as revealing as it is disturbing. Could it be that the security machinery is really incapable of reacting to, let alone coping with, what is clearly sectarian cleansing, most prominently in Balochistan? Or is it that the government can still get a handle on the situation but sees it politic to concentrate energies elsewhere for the moment, like judiciary, military and election issues? Or is it that our one-time nest egg, the mulla-cleric novelty of the Soviet jihad, has become so big and powerful a monster that where it cannot directly control the security apparatus, it just bypasses it with impunity?
Granted, preempting such unfortunate instances is difficult at the best of times in places like Quetta, therefore the government’s position must best be revealed by its response. And sadly, where actions should speak louder than words, Islamabad draws a big blank. Why does the interior ministry not move against militant outfits always taking responsibility for this savage monstrosity? Why does Malik Ishaq roam free, addressing large rallies, when his Lashkar e Jhangvi openly prides itself for killing the Shia?
It seems Pakistan is really fast descending into a no-go hell-on-earth marked by extremism, fanaticism and savagery. The burden of responsibility dictates that an authority mute during and after repeated violations of the law must be held complicit with the perpetrators. And the more Islamabad delays necessary action, the more it risks being branded party to the crime. Already the Hazara, once the epitome of the good Pakistani, are embittered to no end, and rightly so; they have buried far more innocent souls than any feelings of loyalty and patriotism they once prided. So much for Jinnah’s secular, progressive Pakistan.
Even worse, a political spectrum obsessed with drone bombings continues to ignore the plight of the Shia, save the MQM, whose strong stance should be mirrored in more parties. Allowing such sectarianism to continue unchecked is the height of infamy, amounting to pouring fuel on an already raging fire. Yet the all-is-well posture dominates in Islamabad, as it is expected to all the way to the election. Meantime tea boys, shoe polishers and taxi drivers comprising the docile Hazara clan continue to pay in blood and tears for the state’s paralysis. What a miscarriage of justice.
Daily Times
Considering that this everyday murder of innocent Hazara, often women and children, is mostly duly claimed by extremist organisations created for just such purposes, the government’s continued silence is as revealing as it is disturbing. Could it be that the security machinery is really incapable of reacting to, let alone coping with, what is clearly sectarian cleansing, most prominently in Balochistan? Or is it that the government can still get a handle on the situation but sees it politic to concentrate energies elsewhere for the moment, like judiciary, military and election issues? Or is it that our one-time nest egg, the mulla-cleric novelty of the Soviet jihad, has become so big and powerful a monster that where it cannot directly control the security apparatus, it just bypasses it with impunity?
Granted, preempting such unfortunate instances is difficult at the best of times in places like Quetta, therefore the government’s position must best be revealed by its response. And sadly, where actions should speak louder than words, Islamabad draws a big blank. Why does the interior ministry not move against militant outfits always taking responsibility for this savage monstrosity? Why does Malik Ishaq roam free, addressing large rallies, when his Lashkar e Jhangvi openly prides itself for killing the Shia?
It seems Pakistan is really fast descending into a no-go hell-on-earth marked by extremism, fanaticism and savagery. The burden of responsibility dictates that an authority mute during and after repeated violations of the law must be held complicit with the perpetrators. And the more Islamabad delays necessary action, the more it risks being branded party to the crime. Already the Hazara, once the epitome of the good Pakistani, are embittered to no end, and rightly so; they have buried far more innocent souls than any feelings of loyalty and patriotism they once prided. So much for Jinnah’s secular, progressive Pakistan.
Even worse, a political spectrum obsessed with drone bombings continues to ignore the plight of the Shia, save the MQM, whose strong stance should be mirrored in more parties. Allowing such sectarianism to continue unchecked is the height of infamy, amounting to pouring fuel on an already raging fire. Yet the all-is-well posture dominates in Islamabad, as it is expected to all the way to the election. Meantime tea boys, shoe polishers and taxi drivers comprising the docile Hazara clan continue to pay in blood and tears for the state’s paralysis. What a miscarriage of justice.
Daily Times
Mashriq News Paper Encourages Terrorists
جب ہمارے بندے شہید کئے جاتے ہے تو لکها جاتا ہے "نامعلوم افراد" یہ معلوم ہونے کے باوجود کے کون لوگ تهے۔
لیکن غیر ذمیداری کی حد کو دیکهئے کہ پرسو فیصل ٹاؤن میں فائرنگ سے تین افراد زخمی ہوۓ تهے اور کل کو مشرق اخبار میں خبر یہ آئ کی "ہزارہ افراد کی فائرنگ سے " تین افراد زخمی۔
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