If Americans and the Brits show little respect for Pakistani citizens today, it is because Pakistani rulers refuse to take a stand on national pride. Pakistanis have been rotting in Indian and Afghan jails, but Pakistan’s incumbent president honors Karzai by inviting him for his inauguration party. Indians send dead bodies of Pakistani prisoners and all we do is release Indian terrorists convicted of killing Pakistani citizens under Indian-sponsored terrorism, instead of sending them to the gallows.
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Dr. Aafia judicial murder by America
The governments of the United States and the United Kingdom have been deliberately humiliating Pakistan by targeting Pakistani students at will, in some cases framing Pakistanis in fake cases. It’s one way of giving Pakistan more bad press and putting pressure for more Pakistani concessions.
But with the case of this dying Pakistani woman, Pakistan has a chance to correct one more wrong that we have accepted in this so-called war on terror.
Just as the Pakistani military has forced the United States to review its wrong policy of trampling on Pakistani interests in the region and paying lip service to us while empowering India, it is time that the Americans – and also the Brits and the Indians, as I explain below – be firmly warned that humiliating Pakistan and Pakistanis as part of United States’ post-9/11 policy will not be tolerated.
I mention the military because Pakistanis have little faith that their politicians, who often play the role of apologists for the US and UK, will ever take a stand for Pakistan’s interest. Those politicians who do are not in power.
Dr. Aafia Siddiqui’s case reeks of anti-Pakistanism that Washington has practiced for the past eight years while courting Pakistan as an ally in the war for the occupation of Afghanistan.
Dr. Aafia’s latest pictures show a dying woman ruthlessly tortured by Americans in US custody. Two of her three children, kidnapped with her from Pakistan’s streets, are missing.
It shames most Pakistanis to think that, while she was tortured and possibly raped by Americans in Afghanistan for years, the government of former President Pervez Musharraf did little to raise a voice for her and other Pakistanis who probably continue to rot in various US-run jails and dungeons in Afghanistan. President Zardari, opposition leader Nawaz Sharif, and a long list of Pakistani politicians have barely raised her case in their interactions with US officials.
We understand the constraints of our politicians. Their money and properties are in London and New York. In fact, they count on US support to remain in power and not be removed by the military or by the people of Pakistan. That’s why instead of boycotting US diplomats in solidarity with Dr. Aafia, US Ambassador Anne Patterson and other US diplomats continue to receive generous treatment in Pakistani circles. Last week Pakistani websites circulated pictures of known Pakistani journalists dancing away at a private party at the US Embassy, in a country where US drones have killed close to 1,000 Pakistani women and children while ‘successfully’ targeting some 20 low-level terrorists.
Betrayed and abandoned by her own, Dr. Aafia was saved not by Pakistan but by Yvonne Ridly, a British journalist.
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