ALI SUKHANVER

Hundreds of human rights victims, activists, diplomats, journalists and student leaders are invited to attend a summit which is organized on the eve of the United Nations Human Rights Council’s main annual session every year in the month of February. This summit is known as the Geneva Summit for Human Rights and Democracy. This Summit is sponsored by a coalition of 25 human rights NGOs from around the world.

Usually it is a routine program of this get-together that human rights activists and former political prisoners from China, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, Venezuela and other countries testify about their personal struggles for human rights, democracy and freedom and join hands to plan action strategies. But to one’s astonishment, there is never a reference to human rights desecration of Palestine at the hands of Israel, the horrific human rights violations in Syria, the shaking human rights abuses in Indian Occupied Kashmir and the eye opening genocide of Rohingyas in Myanmar.

It seems that this summit is organized just to provide an opportunity of getting closer and getting united to the elements hostile to the countries like Pakistan, Iran, China, North-Korea or in other words to the countries not in ‘good-books’ of the US. It is a more interesting fact that from these countries only those people are invited to attend the summit that are emotionally and spiritually alien to their own countries.

In the summit they are given a full liberty of speaking against their own people, their own system and their own motherland. Most of such invitees are regarded in their own countries as traitors or foreign agents. And all this is done under the guise of ‘a war against human rights violations’. One finds a lot of similarity and resemblance between this ‘war against human rights violations’ and ‘the US war against terror’.

Everyone knows that US started the so-called war on terror just to target and destabilize the countries which could prove a threat to the US hegemonic designs at some later stage. Cruelties of Israel in Palestine and those of India in the Indian Occupied Kashmir were never treated as ‘Terror Activities’ and nothing was done to chain down them at the same time Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq and Pakistan were given a real tough time.

Though the countries like China and South Korea would also be in the list of ‘to be destroyed’ but the schemers would have marked them as ‘hard pills to swallow’. Activities like the Geneva Summit also seem a sequel to the same philosophy and unluckily one finds Pakistan always at the top of the list of target countries. As far as Pakistan is concerned, it is always a pinching thorn for the brains behind the Geneva Summit like activities.

They dream of a Pakistan dominated by a democracy of their own desire; a Pakistan where the Army and the Intelligence agencies are nothing more than a rubber-stamp; a Pakistan without Wahga Border and without the Durand Line. To materialize their illogical dream of turning Pakistan into a ‘banana state’, these brains keep on doing intrigues and conspiracies. They remain busy in searching for the so-called ‘lovers of democracy’, encourage and support them and ultimately throw them into the battle-field to fight a proxy war against their own people. Such anti-state characters are invited to different TV talk shows, international seminars and conferences and they are asked to write articles for various papers and magazines and ooze out their venom against their own country.

Why the western countries seem more worried about Pakistan than the people of Pakistan themselves; this question must also be answered. From US to the Great Britain, every year so many conferences and seminars are organized to discuss Pakistan’s political turmoil, Pakistan’s role in the war on terror and Pakistan’s economic ups and downs. Their worries no doubt provide the strongest proof of the ever-denied fact that Pakistan is always and everywhere important and that it has an un-ignorable role to play in world politics. And more interesting is the fact that the whole focus of all the speakers and participants of these seminars and conferences remains the Pakistan Army and the ISI. One feels that the speakers at these seminars and conferences are never happy with these two very sacred institutions of Pakistan.

The sin and the crime of the Pakistan Army and the ISI is that these two institutions are the hardest hurdle in the way of those who dream of seeing Pakistan as a shattered and scattered state with the worst law and order situation, poor economy and miserable political instability.  ‘Pakistan Politics’ was the title of an article which was published in the Global Security somewhere in the beginning of 2018, an article .

The article said, ‘The army generals are in charge of Pakistan; they have a firm grip over defense and security policies, foreign affairs, and internal matters. There had been a struggle between the army and Nawaz Sharif for quite some time. During his second term as prime minister in the early 1990s, Sharif attempted to remove a military chief but instead had to resign himself.’

The same concept was floated through another report published a few weeks back in the Economist. The title was ‘General dysfunction-Pakistan’s army is using every trick to sideline Nawaz Sharif.’ The said article also attempted to blame the Pakistan Army of ‘engineering’ the upcoming elections. The fact of the matter is that the only purpose of such propaganda articles, biased seminars and prejudice-based conferences is simply to spread disinformation and deform the actual face of the Pakistan. The Army has just one role to play in the elections, i.e.to maintain law and order situation and to provide security to the election process.

Who votes and to whom votes; Army has nothing to do with it. The so-called care takers of human rights must cast a look at the Indian Occupied Kashmir where life of every Kashmiri is a never ending tale of miseries and sufferings and of exploitation at the hands of the Indian army. Pakistan is a democratic country with a very strong accountability system which is supported by a very impartial judiciary. And above all, there are millions of Pakistanis who have a very strong weapon in their hands; the ballot paper. Let the people of Pakistan decide their own destiny using this strongest weapon.