ISLAMABAD: The main opposition Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) has condemned the distinction between sectarian and non-sectarian terrorist outfits made again by Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan as deeply flawed, grievously offensive and extremely dangerous for the state and society.

In a statement issued by the PPP media office here on Sunday, party spokesman Senator Farhatullah Babar said that the interior minister appeared to be unaware that the Difa-i-Pakistan Council (DPC) had been publicly calling for an armed Jihad in a neighbouring country and had been allowing its platform to be used by banned outfits also.

Defending his remarks made in Senate last week, Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan told reporters in Kallar Syedan on Saturday that he believed there should be separate laws for organisations proscribed on the ground of terrorist links and those banned on a sectarian basis.

The minister has been under severe criticism from opposition parties after the last month’s report of Justice Qazi Faiz Isa on terrorists’ suicide bombing in the Quetta Civil Hospital which left 70 people dead and dozens injured in August last year.

In the report, the commission had expressed concerns over lack of implementation of the National Action Plan (NAP) against terrorists and specially mentioned a meeting of the interior minister with a member of a banned organisation as part of a delegation of the DPC in Islamabad.

“Does the minister wish to assert that proscribed organisations can freely assemble under the banner of the DPC because the latter is not a proscribed organisation or does he want to assert that calling for armed Jihad in a neighbouring country by any outfit is a state policy?” Mr Babar said in his statement.

He said that to assert that banned sectarian outfits could not be equated with banned terrorist groups betrayed ignorance of the violence created by ‘Takfiri rhetoric’ of the sectarian groups.

Published in Dawn January 16th, 2017