by MARVI SIRMED
That our citizens in Balochistan have been victims of most brutal subjugation, suppression, abuse, violence and rights violations at the hands of our own state is a fact that must shame us
While the reports released by the US State Department kept indicting China, Iran and other ‘rogue’ countries in the ‘axis of evil’ for human rights violations, similar reports kept sprouting from China and Russia against the US. More so, international rights watchers like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch accused the US of “practices that grossly violate human rights, like the death penalty, poor prison conditions and sentencing youth offenders to life without parole”.The Apologetic Index, which deals with the cults, sects, religious freedom and other human rights, records that the US government “generally fails to acknowledge, let alone address, America’s own human rights violations (e.g. use and promotion of the death penalty, a faulty ‘justice’ system, multiple violations of international treaties, export of torture equipment, continuing trade war on Cuba, failing to curb hate groups, support of extremist groups such as the Church of Scientology, and so on).”
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Nonetheless, despite all the human rights politics in play on what Rohrabacher kept calling ‘Balookistan’, Pakistan should not let it go under the fog of the US’s “ill-advised move” to “intrude in our internal affairs”. Issues that came up during the hearing need serious self-evaluation if another 1971 is to be avoided. Putting everything down to ‘international conspiracies’ and the over-defined ‘enemies’ of Pakistan and adopting a sense of victimhood so popular among us would only damage our own selves. The ‘difa’ (defence) of sovereignty is in appraising ourselves and taking corrective measures, not in prompting civil disorder by instigative rallies in big urban centres.
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(Thanks to Abdul Hamid Bashani Khan)