Islamabad: The staff of Pakistan High Commission in India and their families continue to face harassment, intimidation and outright violence from Indian state agencies, the Foreign Office said on Tuesday.
Subsequently, Indian Deputy High Commissioner J P Singh was summoned by South Asia and Saarc Director General Dr Mohammad Faisal to lodge a protest at ‘the maltreatment being meted out to the officials and families of the Pakistan High Commission in New Delhi’, according to the statement.
The Foreign Office said “these incidents have escalated exponentially in the last few days,” adding that in the latest of such incidents on Tuesday, a car carrying school-going children of the counsellor was followed by unknown persons on cars and motorcycles.
“The children were harassed, intimidated and their vehicle was blocked. For psychological intimidation, videos and photographs of the children were constantly made for 40 minutes, leaving the children extremely traumatised. They were followed all the way to their residence.”
The statement said that the drivers of the High Commission were forcibly halted and their mobile phones switched off to prevent them from contacting anyone.
It added that on March 7 and 8, too, the children of the officers of the High Commission were harassed while returning from school. “Their cars were stopped by unknown persons who threatened the children and filmed them.”
“When a protest was lodged following this incident, instead of ameliorating the situation, it was followed by further harassment and stoppage of the provision of gas to the residential complex and further threatening of staff working at the High Commission,” reads the statement.
In other incidents on March 9, the naval adviser’s car was aggressively chased and a political counsellor was forcibly evicted from a cab and harassed by unknown persons, who used abusive language, threatened him and filmed the whole incident with impunity, added the statement.
Three days later, on March 12, some technicians were threatened and prevented from working at the diplomatic office. That evening, the First Secretary was aggressively followed when he left work for his residence.
“Despite repeated official protests lodged with the Indian Ministry of External Affairs at the highest level, there has been a rise in the occurrence of such disturbing events,” said Dr Mohammad Faisal on Tuesday, adding that the safety and the security of Pakistani diplomats and their families is the responsibility of the Indian government under the Vienna Convention.
“The total apathy and failure of the Indian government to put a halt to these incidents, sparing not even young children, indicates both a lack of capacity to protect foreign diplomats posted in India or a more reprehensible, complicit unwillingness to do so,” he said.
A demarche was made to the Indian High Commission in Islamabad and external affairs ministry in New Delhi on Saturdayover these ongoing series of incidents.
Published in Daily Times, March 14th 2018.
