LAHORE, Oct 11: The president of the Amnesty International, Pakistan, has urged the government to convene a national conference of political parties and civil society groups to evolve a strategy for solving core national human rights and economic issues besides offering unconditional amnesty to warring groups in tribal areas ready for a dialogue.
Addressing a media conference at the Lahore Press Club on Saturday, Fayyazur Rahman said the Amnesty was ready to mediate for reconciliation between the government and the warring groups if the former announced an unconditional amnesty for them.
He said people had rejected Gen Musharraf’s policies and voted for a change in Feb 18 elections, but the present government was continuing the military operation launched by him in the NWFP, Fata and Balochistan without a national consensus.
The whole region was under dangers and affects of war, and there were serious human rights concerns, including dislocation of people and economic issues like shortage of food and other basic necessities.
He said many human rights violations had been committed during the US-led war on terror owing to which thousands of people had been killed and arbitrarily detained. Many had been tortured and held at undisclosed locations without any information about their fate or whereabouts.
Their families, distressed with lack of information, were harassed and threatened when they sought information about them.
He said the Amnesty feared that the Pakistan government was not fighting a war for its country, but had started it for US President George W. Bush.
He said the Amnesty had reports that there were dozens of torture and detention centres in Pakistan where people were kept incommunicado for undefined periods under severe torture. Many had been killed and disabled for the rest of their lives. He said the new government claimed to represent the people, but it had also not bothered to investigate the existence of such cells and transfer of many detainees to Guantanamo Bay. Dr Aafia Siddiqui had been kept incommunicado by Pakistan and US secret agencies before her case was highlighted by the Amnesty International.
He said the Amnesty condemned the US-led attacks in tribal areas because it violated the sovereignty of Pakistan on one hand and killing and displacement of innocent people on the other.
The Pakistan government was, however, not ready to withdraw from the war on terror despite the fact that military commanders and diplomats of the US and the UK had expressed concern over bleak chances of victory in Iraq and Afghan wars and stressed the need for evolving a strategy for peace.
The decision of Red Cross to declare the entire Pakistan as war zone indicated the increasing intensity of terrorist attacks resulting in increased insecurity and economic meltdown, he said.