New Delhi
9 September 2006
Members of the European Parliament have demanded that Pakistan
President General Pervez Musharraf should be acquainted with their concerns about the
continuing growth of extremism and the absence of a functioning democratic system in
Pakistan when he visits Brussels to address the European Parliament. He will address
the lawmakers in the Parliament's foreign affairs committee on Tuesday.
"It is imperative to seek President Musharraf's comments on the manner in which
different well recognised terrorist groups such as Al Qaeda, the Taliban, the Jaish-e-
Mohammad, the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba (LeT) and the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen (HM) still continue
to operate with a considerable degree of impunity in Pakistan," the lawmakers have
written in a letter to Josep Borell Fontelles, president of the European Parliament.
"General Musharraf must inform us about why despite having been in power of the head
of the powerful military for the past eight years, he has not been able to eradicate the
threat that these groups pose not just in Pakistan's neighbourhood but far afield in
western democratic nations. It might be worth mentioning to him that every single
incident of terrorism that has occurred anywhere in the world in the past decade has
thrown up a link with Pakistan," they wrote.
Making their displeasure known at the "disturbing evolution" of Pakistan under General
Musharraf, the European lawmakers -- Marek Aleksander Czarnecki, Leopold Jozef
Rutowicz and Ryszard Czarnecki -- said that the absence of a functioning democratic
system lay at the core of many of the ills that plague that country today. "[It] is beginning
to impact on other countries particularly in the form of the export of extremism linked
with violence," they asserted.
They went on to observe, "It is this absence of a functioning democratic polity that has
also impacted on the welfare and rights of the people inhabiting the territory of Kashmir
controlled by Pakistan. The people of Gilgit and Baltistan have had no democratic rights
since 1947. They continue to be ruled from Islamabad with no say in the manner in which
they wished to be governed or to define their destiny."
"While [Pakistan Occupied Kashmir] is supposedly guided by democratic principles, the
reality is that the democratic process in [POK] is extremely circumscribed. [It] is highky
significant that Pakistan which has consistently championed the rights of the Kashmiris,
is today in the dock at the hands of the population of [POK] with the major political
opposition parties alleging blatant rigging in the recent elections at the behest of
Pakistan's armed forces-dominated establishment," they said.
The three members of the European Parliament also said that the situation in
Balochistan continues to be of major concern. "It is also alarming that rather than
engaging in meaningful political discussions to address the genuine historical
grievances of the people of Balochistan, President Musharraf's Government has thought
it fit to deploy the might of the battle-tested Pakistan army including its helicopter
gunships against its own people in Balochistan," they said, raising concerns regarding
certain specific facets of the contemporary political and social situation in Pakistan.
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