Stop Genocide of Pashtuns in Pakistan

The horrifying video reported by Jane Perlez in an article of New York Times on September 29, 2010, showing Pakistan Army officers mass-killing six innocent blind-folded young men with their hands tied-back, has shocked the world.

The way the Pakistani soldiers shot and killed the young men some of them as young as 14 years and then shooting at short range on those who were still alive and wounded, to finish them, dwarfs the atrocities committed by chetnik Serbs in Bosnia & Herzegovina. http://observers.france24.com/content/20101025-pakistan-s...

“A Pakistani intelligence official, who did not want to be identified discussing the issue, said he had seen other such videos and heard reports of executions larger than the one in the video”, the report goes on to says. Pakistani Military has now embarked on treating the Pashtuns the same way they used to treat Bengalis before 1971 partition. The same treatment of mass-killings both by the Military and Jamat-e-Islami in those days is repeated in Pashtun Areas now. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, FATA and Karachi are red with Pashtun Blood. Since, 2004, more than 600 schools have been destroyed by these terrorists which means that our area is quickly drifting towards a stone-age-era. Most of the prominent elders, journalists, educationists and human rights activists have been killed by both Pakistani Military and Taliban. The Pashtun culture and tradition of Pakhtunwali is in danger of extinction. More than 1500 Maliks (prominent elders) have been killed in FATA, as confirmed by independent sources. Pashtun nationalism is on rise in retaliation to the atrocities committed by Saudi-funded Taliban and the Pakistani Military. I request all the Pashtuns to stand against these atrocities and protect our centuries old traditions of Pakhtunwali which are in danger due to continuous onslaught of Talibans and Pakistani Military.

Some reports, particularly from Waziristan, that the State Department was reviewing were increasingly specific and credible, a senior US Administration official is reported to have said. If proper action is not taken in time by International Community, the 3000-10000 prisoners rounded up by Pakistan Army during their fake operations against insurgents, can also be killed extra-judicially by Army in the same pattern.

In my Article titled “Khyber Pakhtunkhwa is burning”, published on August 26, 2010, a detailed description of the situation is made. Mass graves discovered at different locations in Swat as confirmed by Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP), Amnesty International (AI) and Human Rights Watch (HRW): reminds of the Serb genocide of 1995 in the city of Srebrenica in Bosnia & Herzegovina. Many more undiscovered Mass-graves are waiting to be unearthed, if and when International Human Rights Organizations will be allowed to enter FATA. The magnitude and scale of torture, killing and forced disappearances by Military Establishment of Pakistan dwarfs the Chilean Dictator, General Augusto Pinochet.

The Supreme Court of Pakistan is powerless, as its orders to produce missing persons before the court for trial are thrown into dustbin by Military Establishment. Credible media reports suggest that some 2,500 people were in detention in the first half of 2010…the numbers subjected to enforced disappearances could be much higher. These detainees are not held under any clear legal framework under Pakistan’s law, a report by Amnesty International published in July this year, confirms. Hundreds of thousands of FATA’s nearly four million residents have fled the increasing brutality of the Pakistani Taleban and of the government’s military response.

We Pashtuns of Pakistan request the International Community to help try all the responsible including the Army high Command who ordered the killings of civilians, in the International Criminal Court. If the Serbs who committed genocide are brought to Hague to face justice then why Pakistan Army Generals cannot be tried in Hague? What hinders International Community from bringing these clean-shaved uniformed Taliban to Hague to try them for crimes against humanity and genocide? If these Generals are above the law? Is the International Justice system selective? Ample evidence is there to prove that, as different International Human rights Organizations like Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and Human Rights Commission of Pakistan have investigated these atrocities and have presented the evidence in their respective reports.