Personality cult of Imran Khan.
Pakistan
The creation of Pakistan was never fully accepted by many British leaders, among them Lord Mountbatten. Mountbatten clearly expressed his lack of support and faith in the Muslim League's idea of Pakistan.
- History
- State Control
- Crime
History
Some of the earliest ancient human civilisations in South Asia originated from areas encompassing present-day Pakistan. The Vedic period (1500–500 BCE) was characterised by an Indo-Aryan culture; during this period the Vedas, the oldest scriptures associated with Hinduism, were composed, and this culture later became well established in the region. The Indo-Greek Kingdom founded by Demetrius of Bactria (180–165 BCE) included Gandhara and Punjab and reached its greatest extent under Menander (165–150 BCE), prospering the Greco-Buddhist culture in the region. The Arab conqueror Muhammad ibn Qasim conquered Sindh and some regions of Punjab in 711 CE. The Pakistan government's official chronology claims this as the time when the foundation of Pakistan was laid but the concept of Pakistan arrived in the 19th century.
"You will find that in course of time Hindus will cease to be Hindus and Muslims will cease to be Muslims, not in the religious sense, because that is the personal faith of each individual, but in the political sense as the citizens of the State."
State Control
There are no fixed or official name for the intelligences services of Pakistan as one cooperative federation; all intelligence services operated under their name. A number of intelligences services are active working on varied intelligence programs including the collection and production of foreign and domestic intelligence, contribute to military planning, and perform espionage.
The Intelligence budgets are kept as secret; a little information is known in public. In 2012, politicians made unsuccessful efforts to introduce a bill for intelligence services financial funds accountable to the Parliament. In 2013, the Supreme Court ordered the government to submit the secret funds to public accounts utilized in the past to topple political governments.
Since the 1990s, the entire intelligence community has been under intense criticism from the international authors and viewers regarding the issues of terrorism, human rights abuses, and methods of intelligence procurements. The intelligence community of Pakistan was first described the English language newspapers, Frontier Post as "invisible government" in an edition published on 18 May 1994. Inter-Services Intelligence is the largest and most-known component of the Pakistani intelligence community. The ISI has been accused of using designated terrorist groups and militants to conduct proxy wars against its neighbors.
"The agency specialises in utilising terrorist organisations as proxies for Pakistani foreign policy, covert action abroad, and controlling domestic politics".
Enforced Disappearances
Forced disappearance in Pakistan originated during the military dictator General Pervez Musharraf (1999 to 2008). The practice continued during subsequent governments. The term missing persons is sometimes used as a euphemism. According to Amina Masood Janjua, a human rights activist and chairperson of Defence of Human Rights Pakistan, there are more than 5,000 reported cases of forced disappearance in Pakistan. Families of missing persons have also staged protest across Pakistan demanding to know the whereabouts their missing family members.
Masood Ahmed Janjua, husband of human rights activist Amina Masood Janjua and a Pakistani businessman from Rawalpindi, disappeared at the age of 25 on 30 July 2005 while traveling on a bus to Peshawar from Lahore with his friend Faisal Faraz. In October 2006, the disappearance case of Masood Janjua was taken up by judges of the Pakistan Supreme Court. Multiple individuals who had experienced enforced disappearances provided testimonies, stating that they had seen both Masood and Faisal in the detention center of Rawalpindi City, operated by ISI, Pakistan's military intelligence agency.
Law enforcement agencies in Pakistan deny this and insist that many of the missing persons have either joined militant organisations such as the TTP in Afghanistan and other conflict zones or they have fled to be an illegal immigrant in Europe and died en route. Enforced disappearances have long been a stain on Pakistan’s human rights record. Most of the cases of forced disappearances in recent year were reported in Pakistan's Balochistan province which has been witnessing a low-level insurgency for more than a decade and a half.
A devout Muslim, Hafiz Abdul Basit disappeared from his home on January 4, 2004, and was believed to have been taken into covert extrajudicial detention in a secret Pakistani interrogation center for the next three and a half years. Tariq Pervez, the director-general of Pakistan's Federal Investigation Agency, was threatened with jail, unless he produced Basit. Pakistani Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad told him: “It has been proved that you lifted the person and now you are responsible for the production of the detainee before this bench. Either produce the detainee or get ready to go to the dungeon.”. Pervez claims he was soon transferred to the custody of Pakistan's intelligence agency, the Interservices Intelligence Directorate.
The Voice for Baloch Missing Persons (VBMP) is a non-governmental organisation which represents family members of people who have been subject to enforced disappearance in Pakistan's province of Balochistan. VBMP records data on enforced disappearances; releases press statements; organises protests, rallies, and hunger strike camps. The organisation alleges that people are disappeared by Pakistan's security agencies, including the Pakistan Army, the Frontier Corps, and its various intelligence agencies including Inter-Services Intelligence and Military Intelligence (Pakistan).
In the period from 2003–2012, it is estimated that 8000 people were kidnapped by Pakistani intelligence services in the Balochistan province. In 2008 alone an estimated 1102 Baloch people disappeared. Since the outset of its occupation, the Pakistani state has resorted to enforced disappearances as a means to suppress the oppressed population of Balochistan, marking a prolonged history of such occurrences. This systematic practice has been employed to silence voices within the region.
Forced conversions
In Pakistan, Hindu and Christian girls are kidnapped, raped, forcibly converted to Islam and married to Muslim men. These girls are generally 12 to 19 years old. According to the Aurat Foundation, about 1,000 non-Muslim girls are forcibly converted to Islam in Pakistan every year. Forced and coerced conversions of religious minorities to Islam occurred at the hands of societal actors. Religious minorities claimed that government actions to stem the problem were inadequate. Several human rights groups have highlighted the increased phenomenon of Hindu girls, particularly in Karachi, being kidnapped from their families and forced to convert to Islam. Human Rights groups have reported that the cases of forced conversion are increasing.
In October 2020, the Pakistani High Court upheld the validity of a forced marriage between 44-year-old man and 13-year-old Christian girl. The man had abducted the girl and then forced her to marry him and convert to Islam. However, on November 9 the High Court in Sindh ruled that the girl was a minor and that her marriage to Azhar violated the Sindh Child Marriage Restraint Act. She returned to the women's shelter after she refused to reunite with her family.
Due to religious persecution in Pakistan, Hindus continue to flee to India. Most of them tend to settle in the state of Rajasthan in India. According to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan data, just around 1,000 Hindu families fled to India in 2013. In May 2014, a member of the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz, Dr Ramesh Kumar Vankwani, claimed in the National Assembly of Pakistan that around 5,000 Hindus are migrating from Pakistan to India every year.
As of April 2012, Pakistan did not provide a legal system for registration of marriages for certain minorities including Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains and Baháʼí. Denial of recognition of Hindu marriages is often used to intimidate and harass Hindus. Married Hindu women have been forcibly kidnapped and married to Muslims, and are left without legal recourse due to inability to prove their previous marriage.
Hindus in what is now Pakistan have declined from 23% of the total population in 1947 to 1.5% today sighting Pakistan for systematic state-sponsored religious discrimination against Hindus through bigoted "anti-blasphemy" laws. Numerous reports of millions of Hindus being held as "bonded laborers" in slavery-like conditions in rural Pakistan, something repeatedly ignored by the Pakistani government. Pakistani Hindus haved faced riots. Mobs attacked five Hindu temples in Karachi and set fire to 25 temples in towns across the province of Sindh. Shops owned by Hindus have also attacked in Sukkur. Hindu homes and temples have also been attacked in Quetta.
Crime
Child Abuse
Child abuse has a history as a form of human slavery and is called “bacha bazi”, the slang for a practice that is prevalent in parts of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Bacha Bazi is a custom created in Afghanistan involving child sexual abuse between older men and young adolescent males or boys, who are called dancing boys. In the 21st century, Bacha bazi is reportedly practiced in various parts of Afghanistan and Northwestern Pakistan. Force and coercion are common, and security officials state they are unable to end such practices because many of the men involved in bacha bazi-related activities are powerful and well-armed warlords.