Washington, Oct. 7 (UNI): Alleging that the "mullah-military alliance" in Pakistan is the main cause of the human rights situation in the country, the sixth annual World Sindhi conference has urged the Pakistan government to respect the rights and stop discrimination against Sindhis there.

Participants, who had come from Canada, Europe, Sindh and various parts of the United States, urged members of the US senate and the Congress, and the State Department to consider the human rights situation in Pakistan while dealing with Pakistan's military leadership.

"Pakistan's military itself has become a state within a state and a huge human rights crushing machine," they said.

'Language, Ideology and Terrorism: The Sindhi Struggle in Pakistan' was the theme of the conference held here yesterday.

"We are not separatists, however Islamabad must decide whether they want to keep us with justice and dignity or force us away by continuing to appropriate our natural resources, our water, our culture and language," speakers at the conference stressed.

The participants, particularly, Humaira Rahman, director of WSI's Canada Chapter, and Munawar Laghari, the executive director of World Sindhi Institute in Washington DC, focused on how the public education system had been used by the bureaucracy to systematically downgrade the use of Sindhi as a medium of instruction, while at the same time distorting the authentic history of Sindh and introducing fundamentalism and intolerance in the text books and curricula.

They also pointed out how the control of content of syllabi had created a culture of hate and glorification of Jihad in Pakistani public schools.

Eminent lawyer and former Law Minister of India Ram Jethmalani reminisced about his roots from Sindh "the cradle of a 5000-year-old language and civilization".

He pleaded for the freedom of Sindhis, who have fled Pakistan to preserve their distinct culture and language.

He also expressed his dismay that the famous speech of Pakistan's founder Mohammed Ali Jinnah on August 11, 1947 declaring the newly independent country as secular has always been censored and ignored by the successive governments in Pakistan.

In his reply to a question on former Indian Prime Minister L K Advani's comment on Jinnah being a secular leader Jethmalani said, "Jinnah was the embodiment of secularism."

Munawar Laghari, set the tone of the deliberations at the conference when he said, "the Government of Pakistan has the military might, they have the F-16's, they have the nuclear bomb, we Sindhis have peace, love, tolerance, pluralism and Sufism. All that we want Pakistan to do is not to discriminate against Sindhis and to give them their rightful place in society."

Humaira Rahman spoke emotionally about how grave the water situation has become in Sindh and about the dangers of building the Kala Bagh dam.

Even though the Pakistan government plans of constructing Kala Bagh Dam over the river Indus have already been rejected in unanimous resolutions by 3 out of 4 provinces, there were fears that Islamabad would somehow carry out the scheme as it would benefit the majority community, she added.

Former chairman of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, Afrasiab Khatak, equated the present military regime in Pakistan with the rule of Taliban in Afghanistan when the Taliban assumed the role of the executive, judiciary and the legislative.

"Likewise, becoming a law unto itself, the military in Pakistan is become the sitting superior judiciary, the law making body and the government of the country," he said.

 

Sindhis of Sindh, in southeastern Pakistan.