Daily Times

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Peoples Party Senator, Fahatullah Babar, while addressing a seminar on the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) at the Pakistan Institute of Parliamentary Services (PIPS) criticised the state for curbing the rights of civil society organisations and not acting properly against the banned outfits.

He said, “The FATF requirements to choke the finances of the banned organisations opened the door for the state to further strangulate the civil society organisations instead of curbing the activities of the banned outfits was just like, behind the facade of a United Nations Security Council resolution, the fundamental rights of the employees of National Command Authority (NCA) were curbed”.

During its recent visit, the FATF delegation found Pakistan deficient in four areas namely the supervision of anti-money laundering law, illicit cross-border movement of currency, poor investigation and prosecution and, non-implementation of UNSC resolution 1267 that also listed Hafiz Saeed as a global terrorist.

Despite the parliament enacting the law, the state did not move to ban the proscribed outfits from reappearing and it was evident from the re-emergence of Lashkar e Taiba (LeT) under different names, he said.

He said that pertinent facts about the Mumbai attack were well known as a result of the investigations but the progress in the case was stalled by the dilatory tactics of the defendants, frequent change of trial judges, assassination of the prosecutor and retracting from original testimony by some key witnesses. He further said that we have to deal with the Mumbai mayhem as it required facing the truth.

Babar said that the real issue was not enacting the laws but the implementation of laws and it required political will and coming out of the denial mode. He further said that it was necessary to regulate the Non-Government Organizations (NGOs) and it should be done through legislation.

I. A. Rehman, the Secretary General Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP), Justice (retired) Chohan, the Chairman National Commission for Human Rights (NCHR), Zafarullah Khan, the Executive Director PIPS, Romona Khurshid Alam, Member National Assembly (MNA), Senator Saif and Muhammad Iqbal, the Director General National Counter Terrorism Authority (NACTA), also addressed the seminar.

Published in Daily Times, August 31^st 2018.