[DAWN] It is becoming increasingly clear that virtually no place in the country, be it rural or urban, mainstream or remote, offers even a modicum of safety for members of Pakistain's religious and ethnic minorities.
The theatre of oppression is growing larger, the danger stalking ever more closely and the risk comes as much from out-of-control mobs as from those who target their quarry with precision — all the while the state behaves like a disinterested bystander. It has been only days since a rioting mob set on fire houses belonging to members of the Ahmadi community in Gujranwala, leading to deaths from suffocation and smoke inhalation.
The state has much to answer for in terms of the treatment that has been meted out to this group of people, yet the Ahmadis are far from alone in their haplessness. On Wednesday, in Beautiful Downtown Peshawar ...capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (formerly known as the North-West Frontier Province), administrative and economic hub for the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan. Peshawar is situated near the eastern end of the Khyber Pass, convenient to the Pak-Afghan border. Peshawar has evolved into one of Pakistan's most ethnically and linguistically diverse cities, which means lots of gunfire. , a gunman opened fire on Sikh traders as they worked in their shops, killing Jagmohan Singh and injuring two other men.
Underscoring this intolerance towards minority faiths, after years of disinterest, the National Assembly, also on Wednesday, empowered the speaker to constitute a special committee to investigate excesses such as murder, kidnappings for ransom and other forms of attacks against Hindus in Sindh's Umerkot district. Here, too, the latest incident of violence is only days old.
In fact, this community has faced so much hostility that there are reports of people fleeing across the eastern border. Whichever minority community dominates the headlines of the day as the victim of the newest atrocity — and hardly any group, be it the Christians, the Hazaras or even the remote Kalash, has been spared — this much is clear: the white strip in the national flag, that was meant to represent the country's religious minorities, is bleeding.
What compounds the tragedy faced by these communities is the fact that in most cases the latter are as much the owners and inheritors of the land that falls within the borders as the majority population. The Sikh community of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa ... formerly NWFP, still Terrorism Central... , for example, has been there for generations and there was space in earlier times for it to integrate with and be welcomed by its compatriots.
In recent years, however, as the area has been increasingly wracked by violence, many have had to flee places such as Tirah valley where they were being particularly targeted by holy warriors and holy warriors. Clearly, even the quiet provincial capital cannot offer them safety.
Is there a way out still from this vortex of religious and ethnic divisions, and the resultant violence? Yes, but the first step lies in the state going beyond commiserations and demonstrating its commitment to protecting the minorities through deed rather than word. Until the general air of hostility against 'the other' is cleared, the way forward will continue to be difficult to locate.
Posted by: Fred ||
08/08/2014 00:00 ||
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Top|| File under: Govt of Pakistan
While furious mobs of leftists draped in Keffiyahs and corn syrup were shrieking about Gazoo in the public squares of every major city, ISIS was continuing its genocidal advance on Baghdad. In the last 24 hours, the Yazidis, a non-Moslem minority, fled ISIS to a mountaintop where their children are dying of thirst.
The stark reality of their plight, caught between thirst and a genocidal army, is in sharp contrast to the phony claims made about Gazoo where truckloads of goods continue passing from Israel during wartime, where the malls have iPhones and the five star hotels offer cakes so tall they can only be cut from a crane.
The dead Yazidi children won't inspire any protests or much in the way of outrage. The hysterical rallies for Gazoo won't suddenly turn into anti-ISIS rallies. If any of the angry white hipsters with dead baby posters are asked about it, they will offer some variation on, "It's Bush's fault" or "It's Tony Blair's fault."
And they had been out there in the early part of the century denouncing any move to remove Saddam Hussein from power. The dead children gassed by Saddam, along with the children in his prisons, were unfortunately created less equal than the photogenic, oddly blonde children of Gazoo's Hamas, always the voice of sweet reason,wood.
Anna, a two-year-old girl whose feet were crushed by Saddam's torturers, never mattered to them. It isn't the children that they care about, not the dying Yazidi children in Iraq, the tortured children in Saddam Hussein's prisons, or even the dead children of Gazoo, used as human shields by Hamas in life and then brandished at rallies after their deaths as cardboard propaganda shields by furious Marxists.
When they thought that Israel had bombed a playground near the al-Shati refugee camp killing nine children, they went into murderous paroxysm of outrage. When it turned out that a misfired Hamas rocket was responsible, they fell silent.
They have equally little interest in the 3-year-old Gazook girl killed by a Hamas rocket in the early days of the war.
The same thing had happened in 2012 when a dead 11-month old baby, formerly an iconic front page photo, vanished into obscurity once the death turned out to have been caused by a Hamas rocket. The same thing happened to Hadil al-Haddad, a 2-year-old girl in Gazoo, who went from iconic photo to yesterday's news once it turned out that a Hamas rocket had been responsible for her death.
However the photos of those dead and maimed children, along with the dead children of Syria and perhaps soon the dead children of the Yazidi, will go on showing up at spitefully angry anti-Israel rallies.
If they genuinely cared about children, they would be at least as outraged, moved and pained by the death of a child at the hands of Saddam Hussein, as they were by ISIS Lions of Islam dying at the hands of American and British soldiers. Instead dead Iraqi children inspired apathy and dead Al Qaeda outrage.
If it was the children that they cared about, then the death of an Israeli child or a Moslem child at the hands of Hamas would matter as much to them as the ones on the bloody placards they now brandish.
#2
Human sacrifices to the grinning devil god continue. The good news is that Truth always finally wins as the evil are swept away.
Posted by: World Watcher ||
08/08/2014 6:05 Comments ||
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#3
Yazidis? How many Yazidis do you know? When is the last time you went and ate some colorful Yazid food at a colorful part of your town?
Do the Yazid have much Oil? WHY do the Moslems hate the Yazid so? But then why do the Moslems hate the Amish and the Lutherans and the seven o'clock news? Why do the Moslems want to machinegun your Golden labrador Retriever for that matter?
And the children? It IS somebody's fault. Have some Coffee and curse your mother.
Posted by: Big Thromoth3646 ||
08/08/2014 7:49 Comments ||
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#4
Why do the Moslems want to machinegun your Golden labrador Retriever
To make dinner for Obama.
Though using a machine gun makes for more work in the preparation.
#4
Absolute rubbish. Dana Milbank, the WAPO opinion writer, tells us that Chinese Americans will contribute to American culture. He says they'll give us "new blood" which I'm guessing is his way of saying they'll contribute their DNA to our gene pool which he apparently considers to be deficient. OK, a little Asian DNA won't hurt as long as they leave out the communism.
But I'm thinking the Chinese immigrants are here legally. They better be. Mo Brooks, the GOP congressman from Alabama who Milbank attempts to trash, was talking about illegal immigrants. Brooks wants to deport illegal immigrants and NOT the legal immigrants. Guys like Milbank never fail to acknowledge that distinction. That's how you can always tell who the real racists are.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
