Put sanctions on Pak: Muhajir group in US urges UN

The term 'Muhajir' is used to describe the Urdu-speaking immigrants who left India in 1947 and came to Pakistan. A large chunk of them settled in the Sindh province.

United Nations, Dec 29: A US-based advocacy group has asked the UN to "place economic and military sanctions" on Pakistan until it addresses grievances of its ethnic and religious minorities, particularly Muhajirs and Balochs.

In a letter to UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, World Muhajirs Congress (WMC), a group seeking rights for Muhajirs, also urged the world body to inquire into the alleged brutal killings and loot in Karachi and other areas of the Sindh province after the assassination of former Pakistan prime Minister Benazir Bhutto on December 27, 2007.

The term 'Muhajir' is used to describe the Urdu-speaking immigrants who left India in 1947 and came to Pakistan. A large chunk of them settled in the Sindh province.

"Benazir Bhutto Zardari had been killed in Punjab; her support base has traditionally lay in rural areas of the Sindh province. It is still a mystery who killed her but what is crystal clear that Karachi and its people had nothing to do with that crime, yet it was the city of Karachi and its Urdu-speaking population who were viciously targeted soon after this murder," the group said in the letter dated December 27.

The group alleged that Muhajirs were systematically discriminated and had been subjected to gross human rights violations for the past several decades.

"WMC appeals the United Nations to place economic and military sanctions against Pakistan until it genuinely addresses grievances of its ethnic and religious minorities, Muhajirs and Balochs in particular, and until its Military stops its barbaric campaign of kill and dump in Karachi and Balochistan," the letter said.

"Given the systematic prejudice and ethnic bias Muhajirs have been facing in Pakistan, it is to hope against the hope that perpetrators of carnage committed in Pakistan against Muhajirs on December 27, 2007 would ever be brought to justice," the letter said.

Therefore, WMC, a US-based advocacy group representing Muhajirs, seeks your intervention in this matter, it said.

"Please, in the name of humanity and justice, exert pressure on Pakistani State to allow the United Nations to conduct an inquiry into incidents of December 27, 2007 to unmask the real perpetrators behind the mayhem and subsequently punish the culprits," the group urged Gutters. Bhutto, the Pakistan Peoples Party chief and a two-time prime minister, was killed along with more than 20 people in a gun and bomb attack in Rawalpindi's Liaquat Bagh during an election campaign rally. She was 54.

PTI