UN panel recommends ‘drastic steps’ to improve Pakistan’s HR record

Geneva-based review seeks end to blasphemy law, death penalty and enforced disappearances

Hassan Belal Zaidi

Geneva: The UN Human Rights Committee on Thursday called on Pakistan to repeal or amend all blasphemy laws, abolish the death penalty, and criminalise enforced disappearances to end the practice of secret detention.

The recommendations came after the conclusion of the review of Pakistan’s commitments under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which was held in Geneva earlier this month.

A New Afghanistan Strategy

No amount of reassurance or incentives will prevent Pakistan from using radical Islamic groups both to suppress ethnic and nationalist aspirations within its borders and as an instrument of its foreign policy

By: Lawrence Sellin, Ph.D

For sixteen years the United States, NATO and the Afghan security forces have fought a war tactically in a strategic environment that made victory impossible.

We have been fighting the wrong war. The war in Afghanistan is actually in Pakistan.

Current American policy towards Pakistan is one based on extortion, whereby, Pakistan, in exchange for money and a veil of undeserved international legitimacy, permits the resupply of US and NATO troops fighting in Afghanistan, while regulating the battle tempo, adjusting its support for and the flow of Taliban, Islamic State (ISIS), Haqqani network jihadis and other terrorist groups.

US lawmaker Ted Poe refers to ‘Pakistan’ as ‘the backstabbing nation’

Washington: Well-known Islamabad baiter, US congressman Ted Poe, has in a tweet called his country’s putative ally “the backstabbing nation of Pakistan’.

In a tweet earlier today, Poe posted a note “applauding” US defense secretary James Mattis’s decision to withhold coalition support funds to Pakistan.

Poe has often taken Pakistan to task as it “supports multiple terrorist organisations”. He is the chair of the ‘terrorism, nonproliferation, and trade’ subcommittee of the US’s foreign affairs committee.

CPEC Represents Colonization of Balochistan by China and Pakistan

A senior teaching fellow and a PhD candidate at the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) has said that the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) represents the colonization of Pakistan for the enrichment of China.

Speaking at the conference “Wall of Silence: Human rights in Balochistan“, Burzine Waghmar said Pakistan’s statehood is based on a fragile framework with no national basis in which Pakistani military acts with no legitimacy and with violence against local populations.

Baloch, Balochistan and their Struggle

To understand why Baloch people resisted Pakistan’s attempts to subdue them we will have to look at the past. A brief look at Baloch history will help us understand the present and also enable us to face the future.

Mir Mohammad Ali Talpur

Nations cannot be manufactured on basis of common religion, ideology or geography as has been the case in Pakistan, Soviet Union and Yugoslavia. Soviet Union and Yugoslavia are no more and in Pakistan fault lines appear daily; you cannot simply lump people together and tell them they are a nation now. Certainly you cannot manufacture a Nation on religious grounds by suppressing diversity in name of religion; it is this suppression of diversity here has resulted in the extreme intolerance that you witness in everyday life in Pakistan and how it is affecting the entire region nay the world. Nations evolve in a historical process they cannot be created on whims of those who would benefit from a custom made nation.

Meet the Mullahs: Pakistan’s Neighborhood Islamist Evangelists in Balochistan

Mulla Ghulam Ullah, Mufti Shamir Aziz Bizenjo, and Khatib Mohammad Ilyas

Mufti Shahmir Aziz Bizenjo receives support from the Pakistani intelligence, military assistance from the Pakistani Army Frontier Corps and financial support from the drug mafia

Lawrence Sellin

Few appreciate the depth and destructive consequences of Pakistan’s decades-long program to “Islamize” every aspect of the society in every remote corner of the country.

Pakistan’s “Islamization” program was initiated by President Zia-ul-Haq (1977-1988), which involved the proliferation of Islamic schools “madrasas” and the promotion of Islamic law “Sharia,” was specifically designed create unity by suppressing ethnic separatism and make Pakistan the global Sunni leader, an effort that eventually led to the proliferation of Islamic terrorist groups within its borders.

July 22: Shaheed Hameedullah Tatazai

July 15: Martyr’s day of Balochistan

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Baloch veteran and writer Mir Mohammad Ali Talpur shares his memories about the Baloch martyrs of July 15, 1960.

Click here to play and download audio 

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No retreat! No Surrender! No compromise!

July 08: The battle of Harboi

July 06: Shaheed Haneef Shambay Baloch