Massacre of Muslims in Gujarat remembered

Published November 5, 2007

LAHORE, Nov 4: Pakistan must invite the attention of the world to the plight of Indian Muslims and discrimination against them as recently pointed out by the Indian media.

This was stated by Senator S.M. Zafar while speaking at a discussion on “Indian secularism and the massacre of the Muslims in Gujarat state” held by the Nazaria-i-Pakistan Foundation (NPF) here on Saturday.

He said it had now been proved that the state government of Gujarat was directly involved in the massacre of Muslims in 2002 and it was the foremost duty of Pakistan to protest against the genocide of Muslims and invite the world attention towards it because they had played an active role in Pakistan movement.

He said all necessary details about the massacre should be collected and sent to the Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC) to convey to Muslim states the strong feelings of the people of Pakistan.

The OIC must persuade India to ensure that it would make all efforts not to allow such a bloodshed of its Muslim minority in future and that no official discrimination would be met against them.

He also urged the Indian Muslims to equip themselves with knowledge and skills like their brethren in Kerala state. He said Pakistan’s media gave little importance to the state of Indian Muslims while the Indian media, particularly the recent reports of the Thelka.dot.com had highlighted their plight.

Lahore High Court’s former chief justice Mehboob Ahmad said the barbarism committed by the Hindus during partition could never been forgotten and the Gujarat bloodshed was the rehearsal of that massacre.

He said India had never missed any opportunity to harm Pakistan and undo the partition as their leaders had been issuing statements that the borderline between the two countries should be removed.