ISLAMABAD: Senators on Monday passed a unanimous resolution to condemn the atrocities being carried out against Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar.
The resolution also urged the international community to take notice of the crimes being committed against humanity. The resolution said women are being raped; children and men were butchered as part of an organized ethnic cleansing of Rohingya Muslims.
Leader of the House Raja Zafarul Haq presented the resolution, which termed the oppression being perpetrated against Rohingya Muslims as crime against humanity.
The resolution condemned the killings on the grounds of race and religion.
The senators called upon the government to immediately take up the matter with the UN secretary general. The House also urged the government to send relief and financial support to Rohingya Muslims.
“The Rohingya Muslims were being pushed into the seas, their houses burnt and demolished, their women raped, their children, women and men butchered as part of an organised campaign of ethnic cleansing. Moreover, they were being denied their fundamental rights as nationals of a country where they have resided for centuries,” the resolution said.
It added, “The House is of the view that this is an issue of humanity, not merely one religion or ethnic group, and the international community as a whole must take firm and urgent notice of these serious and unprecedented violations of human rights since these are also a violation of the United Nations Charter, the UN Declaration of Human Rights, all international laws and covenants including the Convention of the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD), and Convention against the Torture (CAT).”
The actions of the Myanmar government are a gross violation of established human rights norms since these violations exhibit a consistent and persistent pattern”.
International law considers these activities as a violation of fundamental human rights obligation, as the State of Myanmar was not merely failing to protect the Rohingya Muslims but promoting deliberate policies of ethnic cleansing, mass deportation and socio-economic deprivation of this beleaguered community. The Senate urged the government of Pakistan to coordinate with other governments in the region and elsewhere for the protection of the rights of Rohingya Muslims including directly approaching the Human Rights Council in Geneva. The Senate also called for dispatching of relief provisions and financial support to the victims.
Meanwhile, in another agenda item, PPP Senator Farhatullah Babar asked for inquiry into the anti-print media ordinance draft which he claimed had been “secretly drafted in the darkness of the night, behind the back of the Parliament and stake holders to stifle the newspaper through unprecedented coercive measures”. Speaking on a point of public importance, he said the Pakistan Print Media Regulatory Authority (PPMRA) Ordinance draft was a throw-back to the notorious 1963 Press and Publications Ordinance of the Ayub era that muzzled the newspapers in the name of national interest for over three decades.
The ordinance proposes to set up a new authority with functions to prepare new guidelines for the issuance of declarations and powers to reviews the declarations annually and even revoke them if the newspaper was found to violate the authority’s rules and arbitrary guidelines. Raids and punishment to journalists and publishers are also envisaged in the ordinance.
Published in Daily Times, September 12th 2017.
