Daily Times

The way succesive governments in this country have bent over backwards to facilitate Arab royals can no better be witnessed than in the sad example of the Houbara Bustard, an endangered specie of bird, ruthlessly hunted down by rich sheikhs and Arab princes in Balochistan and other areas in Pakistan where, supposedly, the bird is protected. This has been happening in our land for years but the matter has taken to another dimension now with the fact that the Balochistan High Court has issued a verdict prohibiting the hunting of the Houbara Bustard, a verdict that is now all set to be defied. This is because, once again, the government, this time of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, has allowed Prince Fahd bin Sultan Abdulaziz al Saud to hunt freely this bird in the Chaghai dictrict of Balochistan, an offer the Saudi royal has no hesitation in accepting. At the time of writing, the hunting party has already landed and is probably readying its guns to hunt down as many endangered birds as possible.

So, how does one go about describing the fact that the government itself is in contempt of court? The Balochistan High Court issued the ban in November of last year when it was brought to its attention that Arab royals had killed as many as 2,100 Bustards, a feat of shocking cruelty. This is a bird that has been described as “vulnerable” and “declining in numbers”, one that must be saved from hunters, not presented to them on a silver platter. The Houbara Bustard is a migratory bird and with the flight of some 500,000 to one million of these birds to Pakistan every year come also the special permits the government issues to Saudi and Arab royals to come and do as they please with the protected birds. What an appalling disregard our government has for anything deserving of its protection and care. What an apathetic attitude towards a marvellous gift of nature, one where we are given the chance to save something instead of harming it. However, we choose to not only allow such savagery to take place in our country, we shove aside the rulings of the High Court to facilitate the Saudis. There is no shame in a government where the whims and pleasures of bored royalty trump the law of the land. The PML-N government had a chance to do the right thing but decided to ally itself with the Saudi princes, once again. *