As Pakistan is left red faced after the international community snubbed Pakistan’s efforts to internationalize the Jammu and Kashmir issue, Pakistan is fast running out of options to soothe out the internal anti-India uproar in radical infested regions. Coming to Pakistan’s support are several controversial activists of the likes of Arundhati Roy who have been pushing not only misleading but also outright false information over the past few years; which is now being used by the Pakistani establishment to further push their anti India Agenda. In a similar incident, a video has surfaced in which Arundhati Roy is not only seen making slanderous comments against the Indian state but is also narrowly legitimizing Pakistan’s oppression of its minorities.
https://twitter.com/SikanderFayyaz/status/1164864043305361409
In the video Arundhati Roy claims that India has been using its armed forces against its own people, she also cunningly pushes in the religious rhetoric of Hindu state against its minorities while at the same time she also declares that Pakistan has never used its army against its own people, narrowly missing out on the millions Bangladeshis, Balochs, Sindhis, Pashtuns, Shias, Hindus, Christians and Ahamediyas murdered, abducted and tortured at the hands of Pakistani military.
Arundhati Roy because of her vacuous comments and her long standing anti-India stance, whether it be maligning the action of the central police forces against Maoists or action of the armed forces against Pakistan backed terror outfits in Kashmir, has been perpetually under fire from observers. Nonetheless while her skewed views on India are sufficient to expose her blatant anti-India rhetoric; her comments on Pakistan are not only highly ignorant but also reek of sinister intents to wash out the crimes committed by Pakistani army.
Only during the 1971 Bangladesh war for independence, the Pakistani military raped between 200,000 and 400,000 Bangladeshi women and girls who were then Pakistani state subjects in a systematic campaign of genocidal rape. At a meeting of the military top brass, then Pakistani president Yahya Khan had openly declared “Kill 3 million of them and the rest will eat out of our hands.” The genocide of Bengali Muslim and Hindus living in Bangladesh is surely one of the worst genocides in the history of mankind which finally to an end after Bangladesh with the support of India defeated Pakistani military and gained independence.
However despite losing half the country, Pakistan was yet to mend its way of brutal military action against its minorities. Another such community in Pakistan which has been fighting this horrific oppression are the Pashtuns under the Pashtun Tahafuz Movement (abbreviated PTM), or the Pashtun Protection Movement. Nonetheless rather than addressing the genuine grievances expressed by this growing movement, the Pakistani government chose to execute a nationwide crackdown of Pashtun voices using brute military force. The Pakistani media also toeing the line of Pakistani military has virtually blacked out all the reportage regarding Pashtun resistance in the State. Many senior members and leaders of the PTM have been repeatedly arrested by the police forces. Pakistan military has also come out openly against the Pashtuns and have been indulging in violent anti-Pashtun rhetoric to discredit the movement and provide cover to the extrajudicial killings and abduction of Pashtun leaders. In one public briefing, the military media spokesperson Asif Gafoor accused the PTM of working on “an anti-Pakistan agenda” with the help of foreign hostile governments signaling to India – a hand book tactic often used by the Pakistani military complex to discredit its critics.
Another major Pakistani military action against Pakistani state subjects is being unfolding in Balochistan, In the period from 2003 to 2012, an estimated of 8000 people were abducted by Pakistani security forces in Balochistan. In 2008 alone, more than 1100 Baloch people had disappeared. There have also been several reports of torture. As the result of a “kill and dump” campaign conducted by Pakistani security forces, particularly Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) an increasing number of bodies “with burn marks, broken limbs, nails pulled out, and sometimes with holes drilled in their heads” are being found on roadsides. While Pakistan continues to plunder the people and resources of Balochistan, people of the likes of Arundhati Roy have been conveniently ignorant.
In Sindh too there is a growing resentment against the strong arm Pakistani military rule which is predominantly of Punjabi ethnicity, a number of cases of murder, abduction and torture of Sindhi leaders and others of the Mohajir community by Pakistan army have also surfaced.
“Millions of Sindhi people are victimized by the Punjabi dominated regime in Islamabad. This grave injustice and massive human rights crisis involves extrajudicial killings, forced disappearances and tactics common in many totalitarian dictatorships this oppression of the Sindhi’s is the work of the Interservice Intelligence, the ISI of Pakistan and the corrupt Pakistani Army,” US Congressman Dana Rohrabacher had said while raising concern over the issue.
The areas of Pakistan occupied Jammu and Kashmir, namely the Gilgit-Baltistan region has also been a victim of state sponsored violence against minorities in the region. Pakistani army has also been orchestrating massive demographic changes in the region by eliminating the ethnic minorities in the region by settling others mainly the dominant Punjabis in the region.
“As we speak, Pakistan’s military and intelligence agencies are busy seizing thousands of acres of private land in Gilgit-Baltistan and those who oppose such illegal policies are declared terrorist and face torture and incarceration,” Sange Sering, chairman of the Movement for Democracy in Gilgit-Baltistan had said at a gathering consisting of various US Law makers.
Nonetheless despite large scale persecution of Pakistani state subjects by the Pakistani army goes un questioned and unopposed by the likes of activists like Arundhati Roy, many allegations of Arundhati Roy being on the pay roll of the ISI have also surfaced. However with rock bottom credibility, comments like these by Arundhati Roy and others are likely to treated on merit which evidently is not only lacking but has been systematically ignored to push forward Pakistani favoring propaganda.