Government urged to arrest killers of Prof Sibte Jaffer, other victims

LONDON: Pakistan’s caretaker government has been urged to provide answer why the killers of Professor Sibte Jaffer Zaidi and other Shia Muslim victims are still at large.
This demand was made on Sunday when hundreds of Pakistani community members gathered outside Pakistan High Commission here under the banner of Jafaria Disaster Management Cell (JDC) to demand action against members of the Al-Qaeda affiliated terrorist outfits such as Lashkar-e-Jehnagvi, Sipah-e-Sahaba and Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan have openly taken responsibility for the killings of Shias across Pakistan.
The protestors carried pictures of Shaheed Sibte Jaffer, who was killed for being a Shia Muslim on while he was returning from his college on March 18. A 20th grade officer, a principal, a teacher, a poet, and a mentor, Sibte Jaffer was known for his simplicity, honesty and philanthropy and for dedicating himself to cause of free education for poor families.
Syed Mujtaba Hussain Naqvi of Jafaria Disaster Management Cell said that no substantive action has been taken by any authorities in Pakistan or indeed by any international agency to put an end to violence against Shia Muslims. “Given the current level of systematic violence against the Shia Muslims, genocide is being silently allowed to happen in Pakistan. The recent attacks in Quetta and Karachi, Pakistan have not even spared even primary school children. Since 80’s Shia professionals have been massacred according to a well-thought-out plan but the authorities have done nothing about it. This kind of discrimination will not be tolerable anywhere in the world but its being allowed because the victims are Shias,” he said.
He told the protestors that the last Pakistan government and its allies failed to take adequate measures to prevent extremist groups from killing Shias. He said there has been no attempt to investigate the threat posed by these groups, no attempt to bring terrorists to justice and no attention to the violence perpetrated by these groups.
He said that violence against Shias in Pakistan is “genocide” under Article 2 of “The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide”.Protestors, who were mainly youth, said that with the murder of Professor Syed Sibte Pakistan has lost an individual whose presence Pakistan needed the most to promote literature, education and social work. They said that Shias were being victimised as part of a senseless bigoted campaign to weaken Pakistan. They said that if the government doesn’t take action against sectarian terrorists then Shias will have no choice but to leave Pakistan.
A petition submitted to Pakistan High Commission urged High Commissioner Wajid Shamsul Hasan to “fulfill his responsibility in demanding and assisting the Pakistani government to end such atrocious targeted killings of innocent Shia Muslim Pakistani civilians”.
“The 40 million Shia Muslims of Pakistan are the second largest religious group after the Sunni Muslims, but have been persecuted resulting in several thousand deaths. The genocide of Shia Muslims continues unabated whilst the state institutions have completely failed to protect them or provide justice whilst the killers roam free. Recent attacks include targeting predominantly Shia civilian areas of Pakistan through series of bomb blasts where up to 500 people have been killed. In some cases many victims were hacked to death and the body parts were sent to their families,” said the petition.