ISLAMABAD: The main opposition Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) wants the government to respond forcefully to the threats hurled by Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) to the Kalash people and members of Ismaili community and to take effective steps for their protection.

The party has also criticised the electronic media for “glamorising Taliban apologists and those representing their viewpoint” and giving them an opportunity to justify their “evil war”.

The Pakistani Taliban through a video message earlier this month had announced an “armed struggle” against an indigenous Kalash tribe and moderate Ismaili Muslims in the picturesque Chitral valley. The Taliban had warned the Kalash, who are thought to number only 3,500, to convert to Islam or face death.

“This threat of attack must be deemed a threat to Pakistan, and core values in Pakistan’s Constitution which ensures protection of its citizens, particularly the religious minorities,” said Central Coordinator of the PPP’s Human Rights Cell Nafeesa Shah in a statement issued by the party’s media office here on Saturday.

Dr Shah, who is also a member of the National Assembly, said it was the government’s responsibility to protect life and property of citizens. “The threat to an entire community which is already vulnerable is a grave matter,” she stated.

Dr Shah said it was surprising that despite repeated bloody attacks in all the major urban centres by the Taliban and their proxies, the government was continuing to hold talks with them as if it was business as usual.

“It seems that in the eyes of the ruling elite the blood of the citizens is cheaper and that the government has no counter-terrorism strategy to protect the 180 million people of Pakistan,” she said.

Criticising the electronic media for, what she called, glamorising Taliban apologists and those representing their viewpoint and for providing them with space to “rationalise their evil war against the country and its citizens”, she termed it “an insult to the thousands of our people who had lost their lives to terrorism”.