UK - Manchester Protest over Shia Killings in Pakistan

(Ahlul Bayt News Agency) - The Manchester (UK) Shia Community alongside Sunni brethren gathered on (Wednesday 20th February 2013) outside the Consulate General of Pakistan to voice deepest concerns over the Genocide that has been taking place in Pakistan. A petition alongside a statement composed by 'Shia Council of Manchester' which consists of All Shia organisations in and around Manchester, was presented to the Consular General Mr Ehsan-Ullah Batth during a meeting held with him. He has promised to take notice of concerns and has also re-assured that the message will be sent with priority to the Pakistani Government and relevant agencies.


OFFICIAL STATEMENT:

The Consular General of Pakistan: Ehsan-Ullah Batth

Consulate General of Pakistan
Pakistan House
137 Dickenson Road
Rusholme
Manchester
M14 5JB

Dear Mr Batth

With this letter, we would like to bring to your attention, a great atrocity that is being committed against the Shia minority in Pakistan. Though there are many injustices being committed in Pakistan and we believe that this particular event needs your foremost attention. This persecution has recently increased in magnitude to a level that reminds us of the unfortunate events that had occurred in Germany during the Second World War against the Jews, so much so that we are witness to a potential “Shia genocide” in Pakistan.

At a human level we find this persecution of the Shia minority highly offensive and disconcerting. It is our duty to try to prevent this massacre and stop this from escalating any further. We urge Pakistan’s democratically elected government to take concrete steps in resolving this issue promptly. We stand in solidarity with the Shia of Quetta and repeat their demands to the local and central government of Pakistan for an immediate and swift response to fulfill their rightful demands:

1. The army should be deployed to protect the people of Quetta.
2. The government must commence a targeted operation against the terrorist perpetrators and bring them to justice.
3. The government must make it illegal to discriminate on religious grounds with real and enforceable consequences.
4. The government must provide substantial and swift compensation to the victims’ families.
We count on your interest and support in this matter of great human value. While, the absolutely one-way sectarian-cleansing of Shias in Pakistan by the extremist militants has gone on for almost two decades, it has now reached alarming proportions. To put it very succinctly:

• People are being taken off the buses and killed for being Shias after proper identification.
• Shias are being identified and then killed in the major urban centers.
• Hazaras in Quetta are being isolated and being killed merely for being Shias.
• Parachinar, Tirah, Gilgit, Baltistan, Nagar etc. are being sequestered and brutally attacked just because Shias live there.
• During 2012, 630 people were identified and killed merely for being Shias. More than 270 Shias have already been killed in one and a half month this year.

This amounts to a modern systematic cleansing of a group in Pakistan with a death toll that now surpasses that of Srebrenica Massacre recognized as genocide. The annihilation of Shias in Pakistan epitomizes the essence of genocidal practices in partial (or complete) destruction of a national group and meets with genocide’s essential notion of complete ostruction of a national group as per 1948 Genocide Convention and all subsequent legal definitions of genocide. It bears resemblance with the killings of Jews in the Germany of early and mid-1930s. It aims to destroy a group and not just the individuals making up the group with the ultimate purpose of destroying the group’s identity to impose identity of the perpetrator. A complete inability to identify, apprehend and bring the perpetrators to justice widens the sphere in government’s and media’s complicity in this genocide.

We count on your capacity to push the Pakistani parliament and the government for substantive action on this important humanitarian issue.


Signed by ‘Shia Council of Manchester’;


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