Army, judiciary urged to end sectarian violence in Pakistan

LONDON: The largest Shia organisation in Europe has called on the Government of Pakistan to call out the military or whatever else it takes to end the relentless and targeted killings of Shias in Pakistani heartlands.
At a press conference here, leaders of the Majlis-e-Ulama Shia Europe (MUS) said that Interior Minister Rehman Malik had provided personal assurances to the Shia community on the government’s behalf that the Shia communities will be protected from the banned terrorist outfits but had failed to provide any effective protection and prevention strategy as well as showing no interest in ending the siege of Shias, particularly in the Northern Areas of Pakistan, some parts of the Punjab and their target killings in Karachi.
Syed Ali Raza Rizvi, President of the organisation, said: “The genocide and cleaning of the Shias goes on in Pakistan. They are being treated in the same way as Jews were treated by the Nazis in Europe. Shias are being kidnapped, killed and dumped both openly and covertly, yet the Pakistan government remains a silent spectator, indulged in politics and hypocrisy and unable to prove its worth.”
Rizvi called on Pakistan Army and the pro-active judiciary to take notice of the situation and come to the rescue of Shia masses to prove that their allegiances didn’t lie with a particular school of thought and that they were not intimidated by the deadly militant forces, still nurtured and seen in some quarters of the establishment as the “strategic assets”.
He said the Pakistani government always acted swiftly and apologised if the Christians, who are under five percent of the total population, are attacked just because Britain and other European countries bring pressure on Pakistan but when Shias, who are estimated to be over 20 percent of the total population, are killed in their hundreds and their neighbourhoods are brought under siege by members of the sectarian outfits then Pakistan’s civil society, mainstream parties, judiciary and the government adopt a policy of silence and make every effort to curb the bad news through censorship.
Rizvi threatened that if curfew in the Northern Areas is not lifted and if a military operation is not started against the sectarian terror groups, then protests will be launched outside Pakistan missions all across Europe to highlight the terrible state of human rights of vulnerable communities in Pakistan.
He said that large sections of the communities lived in peace but a tiny minority was involved in barbarian acts to destabilise Pakistan by crafting sectarian conflicts, isolating it from its neighbours, and ultimately leading it to a failed state in order to appease the international plotters, who ultimately want to take control of Pakistani nukes.
He said it happened only in Pakistan where the citizens of the state were taken off buses, their names checked to ascertain their school of thought and then executed all the while law enforcement agencies not only failed to act but also provided safe passage to the terrorists.
Syed Ali Raza Rizvi said the rise in killings had enraged millions of law-abiding Shias who were increasingly of the view that the state security institutions were never there to protect them and used every opportunity to persecute the persecuted.
“It will not be possible for the elders to control the youth for long. We don’t want to take the law into our own hands to help the criminal foreign agenda but the state must understand our compulsion.”
Others who were present on this occasion included Syed Hassan Abbas Rizvi, information secretary, Azmat Abbas Zohairi, Finance Secretary, Jafar Najam, General Secretary, Hasan Maroufi, Vice President, and Ali Abbas, member.