Voices against terror camps and favouring action against terror groups are growing louder in Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir (PoK) and Pakistan.
Residents of PoK on Thursday said their lives have been made a living hell by the presence of terrorist training camps thriving in the area. Residents of Muzaffarabad, Kotli, Chinari, Mirpur, Gilgit, Diamer and Neelum Valley, in PoK staged a protest against the terror training camps there.
“Banned organisations, terror camps are provided food and ration here, we condemn it,” a local leader in Muzaffarabad, PoK, told ANI. Meanwhile, ruling as well as Opposition lawmakers asked the Pakistani Government to stop protecting terrorists like Hafiz Sayeed whose activities have plunged the country into diplomatic isolation.
Rana Muhammad Afzal, a ruling Pakistan Muslim league-Nawaz (PMl-N) lawmaker, on Thursday questioned the Government’s failure to act against Saeed, the founder of lashkar-e-Taiba and the head of its frontal charity Jamaat-ud-Dawa.
“Which eggs is Hafiz Saeed laying for us that we are nurturing him,” Afzal said in a meeting of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, according to the BBC Urdu.
Afzal, a member of the parliamentary panel, questioned the efficacy of Pakistan’s foreign policy and said it had become such that “we have not been able to get rid of Hafiz Saeed so far”.
Opposition Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) leader Aitzaz Ahsan told a joint session of Parliament that the country was diplomatically isolated because it gives freedom to non-State actors.
“The Government has been completely unsuccessful in imposing restrictions on non-State actors according to the National Action Plan (NPA),” the Dawn newspaper quoted Ahsan as saying.
He implied that such elements continued to hold protests and rallies and give speeches in places such as Islamabad, lahore, Faisalabad and Karachi.
“I don’t want instability in any country, as the blame of that will then fall on us because of these non-state actors,” he said.
He said the failure to curb terrorists would isolate Pakistan. “Then Bangladesh and Afghanistan will not speak to you, and Bhutan and Nepal will begin supporting India.”
“You have isolated Pakistan,” he said, adding Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was responsible for Pakistan’s diplomatic isolation as he was also the Foreign Minister.