KARACHI: Jamaat-i-Islami (JI) Pakistan chief Senator Sirajul Haq has criticised the government of Pakistan for its “failure and criminal silence over extrajudicial killings in Bangladesh on the pretext of so-called war crimes”.

He urged the international community to play its due role in stopping the Bangladeshi government from politically victimising and persecuting opposition leaders.

The JI chief made this demand while speaking a protest rally taken out by JI Karachi chapter from the Numaish intersection to the See Breeze building on Sunday against the Bangladeshi government.

The participants in the rally were carrying placards and banners inscribed with slogans against ‘injustices’ of the Bangladeshi government.

The JI chief said that the Bangladeshi government was executing its political rivals through a controversial tribunal.

He claimed that the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz government was betraying those who supported the then united Pakistan and were now being executed through ‘the kangaroo courts’.

Expressing grief and anger over the Pakistani government’s behaviour, he said the JI leaders had approached several government high-ups to discuss the issue with them, but the rulers were not ready to take any step in this regard.

He said his party had also contacted several diplomatic missions for release of political prisoners in Bangladesh, but all were of the view that nothing could be done without the active role of the Pakistani government as the state was also a part of the pact in 1971 under which it had been decided that no cases would be filed against anyone.

The JI chief said it was a matter of great shame for the nation that even the elected government “did not dare” to take up the issue at the platform of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation.

Published in Dawn, May 9th, 2016