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PAKISTAN: Minorities test aid impartiality
(IRIN) - People have been turned away from relief camps set up for flood victims in Pakistain mostly due to a lack of space, but in some instances decisions on who gets aid appear to have been affected by religious or ethnic discrimination. "We saw several families of gypsies who had reached a camp turned away by other victims and some organizers of the NGO running it. The women were in tears because they had nowhere to go," Imdad Imran, 30, a flood victim, told IRIN. "People call us 'unclean' or say we are thieves. We have camped by the road because we know other flood victims may not like us to live near them in camps," said Bala Din, 60, a gypsy, who has been with some 30 other members of the community on a roadside since the floods forced people to evacuate villages across Muzaffargarh District, in the southwestern part of Punjab Province, in early August. He said they had received sporadic food hand-outs from relief workers. "But we are often hungry unlike those in camps." The nomadic gypsies who can be found across the country frequently face prejudice. They are not alone. Following the floods, other groups have also been denied aid on the basis of their identity. In Punjab Province's nearby Dera Ghazi Khan District, villagers from the Ahmadi sect, considered non-Mohammedans under Pakistain's laws, were turned away from camps after fleeing homes along the River Indus. "Local clerics began to demand these Ahmadis not be allowed into the camps. Police backed them. About 500 families were affected," Qamar Suleiman, a front man for the Ahmadi community, told IRIN from the central Punjab town of Rabwah. There have been similar complaints from the districts of Muzaffargarh and nearby Rajanpur. "The Ahmadi community itself helped these people. Some were brought to Rabwah and some given help in Dera Ghazi Khan," said Suleiman. Hassan Iqbal, the commissioner of Dera Ghazi Khan, told the media "Ahmadis should approach me directly if there is discrimination." Posted by: Fred 2010-09-10 |
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