What Diplomatic Isolation Looks Like

Source: The News

There finally comes a time in the relationships between nations when you start seeing the end of the concessions given to a party.

Pakistan has been given the warning that many have talked about around the world and finally has been put into the terrorism funding watchlist by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), perhaps only a day or two after the Pakistani diplomats were boasting of evading the banking and economic sanction. This was probably because they had decided to formally do that in the next meeting in June 2018, when the term of the current elected government of PML-N will pretty much be completed and had not made the announcement earlier. The last time Pakistan was on the watchlist was 2012, until 2015 when it was removed from the list by the body.

While Khawaja Asif’s delegation had thought that Saudi Arabia and China had done just enough to keep them off the list, especially ahead of Pakistan sending a thousand troops to the Kingdom, probably for the Yemen campaign, it wasn’t to be. The United States had particularly lobbied following the US administration’s tough stance against Pakistan’s policy on fighting terrorism.

While the Chief of Army Staff Qamar Javed Bajwa made quite a few important comments in his speech at the Munich Security Conference, such as the premature withdrawal of military resources from Afghanistan by the US government, his overall case apparently failed to make an impression on the international community. Time and time again, the response of Pakistani military and diplomats have been pointing fingers back at the West for this failed policies. Foreign Minister Khawaja Asif has also brought up the US-Afghan Policy during the latter years of Cold War and has even gone far enough to say that it was a mistake to follow that path.

Listen to the speech of the Army Chief and you will get an impression as if the militant Jihad is some sort of a recent invention. He also probably does not realize that his speech really got weird for a foreign audience at a point when he said that a body of Islamic clerics from all sects had passed a decree that Jihad and suicide bombing were not permitted “until sanctioned by the state.” Yeah, right. That’s precisely what the security officials from around the world wanted to hear. I just hope I am wrong or he should fire his communications director.

Source: RFE/RL

But really our military establishment has more people’s performance to worry about than just their communications team. We can make it a national issue because of our bloated egos as in the case of the “Dawn leaks,” but the inaction of the security establishment to take. We are talking about a country where Hafiz Saeed, a certified terrorist in the eyes of India and the West and pretty much the rest of the world, has formed a political party which is contesting elections. And of course, anyone who claims that his Difa-e-Pakistan Council has no support from the military establishment is obviously living in a fool’s paradise.

Pakistan finally needs to decide whether it wants international acceptance or not. It is up to the Pakistani state to decide if we want to become Iran or North Korea in the world’s eyes or a progressive democratic nation. Pakistan is nowhere near going to be acceptable to the international community with the same course of action. The government and the military simply cannot keep on distracting and diverging when answered a simple question about taking action against terrorist elements within the country. The FATF restrictions are only going to make the people suffer from the horrific policies of their ruling state.

Yes, more is needed to be done indeed.

A Jumping Escape from Justice

Source: Pakistan Times Youtube

It was not a leap of faith. It was a jump of desperation.

It would be criminal of us to even remotely pretend to know what this person must be going through.

Sajid Masih is the latest casualty of the impeccable Islamic Sharia Justice system that we are so proud of. But wait, it is not Islamic Sharia system. Because in the case of Islamic Sharia, he would have been beheaded long ago. Though would he have endured the kind of abuse that Sajjad did is debatable. At least you can be sure of it in Pakistan’s imperfect law enforcement and the justice system. Let’s blame it on the colonial times.

Pakistan’s federal law enforcement agency FIA has been accused of abuse and torture by a dying man. That man is a Pakistani of Christian faith known as Sajjad Masih. He is the cousin of fellow detainee Patras Masih, who is accused of blasphemy and was detained with his cousin. According to him, apart from brutally torturing them, the FIA officials forced them to have oral sex with each other. While other mortals might have succumbed to their vile demands, Sajjad chose to break free and jump from the fourth floor of the building instead, regardless of consequences.

Check this tweet out by politician and activist Jibran Nasir.

Sajid Masih gives statement from the hospital explaining why he had to jump off the 4 floor of FIA building in Lhe. He claims FIA beat him up during investigation of blasphemy case against his cousin Patras & officers tried to force him to have oral sex with his cousin @CMShehbaz pic.twitter.com/6uijQiyvY3

— M. Jibran Nasir (@MJibranNasir) February 24, 2018

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

Now you may say that this is simply the big government going out of control but this is far more than that. While the sadistic FIA officials may have a habit of having fun at the expense of the detained individuals but they were not keeping Sajid and his cousin locked for fraud or murder exactly. It makes the occurrence all the more tragic and infuriating when you realize that they were being held for committing absolutely no crime at all. There really is no need to prove the insanity of

Here is the video in unadulterated form.

It is important to document instances such as this because of the social conservative majority in Pakistan that refuses to accept the wrong a theocratic constitution is doing to the non-Muslim minorities. It is also important to remind them that a secular constitution.

Source: Reuters

Sajid Masih’s misery and his struggle with life and death are a direct consequence of the draconian blasphemy law in Pakistan. People failing to recognize and at least voice their opinion against them are being complacent to one of the most blatant systematic and apartheid murders happening in our times. And if Pakistan was not getting enough bad publicity, Rome made the Colosseum go red to protest the blasphemy law in Pakistan.

The secular democratic forces in Pakistan must unite in the manner of the manifesto of such a larger movement proposed by the Awami Workers Party, which actually deserves another post but here goes.

If not for any other reason, we must come together to get rid of this evil from Pakistan. We can’t claim to reform our corrupt authoritarian state but perhaps we can at least do our due to defeat the organized apartheid theocratic terrorism in Pakistan.