Prime Minister @andyburnham and Foreign Secretary @Ed_Miliband : how much longer will Britain remain silent?
For three years the father of my two sons, and Pakistan’s former Prime Minister, Imran Khan, has been brutally penalised by his political opponents, in a personal vendetta by Army Chief, Asim Munir, which according to the UN, amounts to torture and which is now taking a potentially fatal toll on his physical and mental health.
He has endured 3 years of solitary confinement. For nearly ten months now his family has been denied contact with him. He has been deprived of the most basic human contact, denied access to books, lawyers and doctors.
The international human-rights standards are unequivocal. Under the UN’s Nelson Mandela Rules, solitary confinement lasting more than 15 consecutive days is prohibited and amounts to torture.
He has endured this treatment not for 15 days, but for three years.
Pakistan’s own Supreme Court has now intervened: ordering comprehensive medical treatment, access to his personal doctor, regular family visits and twice-weekly calls with his sons.
Yet those orders are being defied.
This is no longer simply a Pakistani political matter. It is a human-rights emergency.
He has deep and lifelong ties to Britain. He studied at Oxford University, captained Oxford University cricket and spent years playing county cricket in England. His relationship with this country stretches back more than half a century. His charitable activities were internationally recognised, and include building the only free cancer hospital in Pakistan as well as a university.
His sons, my two boys, Sulaiman and Kasim, are British citizens. They have been forced to watch their father’s health decline from thousands of miles away, prevented from visiting him, denied visas, publicly threatened by government officials with arrest themselves, and even denied court-mandated regular phone calls.
I have repeatedly appealed to the UK government to intervene. Purported attempts at back channelling have evidently failed. The previous Foreign Secretary @DavidLammy informed me in writing that Britain would not intervene if my sons, British citizens, are arrested when they travel to Pakistan to visit their father.
@FCDOGovUK: Britain must now speak out publicly and unequivocally. Demand that Pakistan comply with its own Supreme Court; restore Imran Khan’s medical access, his right to see his family, end his prolonged isolation and uphold his fundamental human rights.
Pakistan is a Commonwealth country. Britain has a long and proud tradition of standing against arbitrary detention, inhumane treatment and the denial of fundamental rights. Those principles mean very little if we invoke them only selectively and neglect them when inconvenient.
This an appeal to the new Burnham government to please now do the right thing.
“Do You Support Israel’s Right to Exist?” Mehdi Hasan FIRES BACK
Mehdi Hasan: I've been debating hardcore Zionists, Israeli supporters of Israel, for years. And the conversation always comes back to one talking point:
“Do you, or do you not support Israel’s right to exist?”
If you don't, you're an extremist, you're an anti-Semite, you want to wipe Israel and millions of Israeli Jews off the map.
But you don't have to concede on this point. It's a bullshit argument.
Number one: Right to exist where?
Israel is the only country in the world that refuses to define its borders.
So if you want me to recognize Israel's right to exist, does that extend into Gaza, the West Bank, the Golan Heights, East Jerusalem all considered illegally occupied territory under international law?
So, right to exist where?
Number two: What is this right to exist? Where does it come from?
States don't have a right to exist. People, individuals have a right to exist. Human beings have that right. Not states, not countries.
The USSR broke up into Russia and 14 other states. Yugoslavia broke up. Czechoslovakia split into Slovakia and the Czech Republic.
What happened to their “right to exist”?
People have rights, not states.
And number three: If there is a right to exist, does Palestine have a right to exist?
Israel exists. It's a country with sovereignty, it's on the map.
The idea that in a world where Israel is genociding the Palestinians in Gaza, ethnically cleansing them in the West Bank, and blocking their legal right to return the idea that Israel's right to exist is the one we should be concerned about, and not Palestine's, is both ridiculous and, let's be honest, racist.
Reuters should explain its editorial standards for reporting on Pakistan. Its recent story portrays Gen. Asim Munir as taking action against Islamist hardliners and the misuse of blasphemy laws, which is an incorrect version of the facts. There is no such action; however, he is actually responsible for the killing of innocent Pakistanis during his broader crackdown on political dissent and civil liberties in Pakistan. The story was written by Pakistani reporters Asif Shahzad, Ariba Shahid, and Mubasher Bukhari. Reuters owes its readers independent, evidence-based journalism—not reporting that has become a military general’s propaganda machine. @Reuters
The U.S. has been significantly weakened by the war with Iran.
This administration depleted our missile defenses, drained our oil reserves, sacrificed our men & women, inflated the price of consumer goods, increased our debt, and neglected our domestic needs…
all for Israel.
Anyone still tip toeing around saying Zionism is the problem instead of jewish supremacy or calling israelis settlers instead of terrorists is a coward.
@Abu_Salah9 Jews are the problem, get that through your thick Muslim skulls, man the fuck up, stop saying settlers and call these
parasites jewish terrorists.
Jesus peace be upon him is *not* jewish.
He is an Israelite from Bani Israel (the Children of Israel [Jacob]), which is the ancestral lineage of the descendants of Prophet Ya'qub (Jacob).
The Yahud (jews) are the faction of Bani Israel who rejected Jesus and his message. It is a religious identity, not the entire lineage.
The first true followers of Jesus (Al-Hawariyyun [the Disciples]) were Israelites who accepted him and submitted to God. We view these first individuals as Muslims because they submitted to the one true God and followed the true Injeel (Gospel).
The Nasara (Christians) emerged directly from the faction of Israelites who accepted Jesus along with the wider non-Israelite native populations of Palestine and West Asia.
You are confusing lineage (Bani Israel) with religion (Yahud and Nasara).
Read the Qur'an 🤍.
یہ دیکھو اس کوٹھے دی کنجری بابر راؤ کو کیسے چپک کے کھڑا ہے بھڑوے احسن اقبال کے ساتھ اور کتے کا بچہ بکواس کر رہا تھا خان کی تصویر غلطی سے deface ہوئی 😡
اس APPNA تنظیم کا مکمل بائیکاٹ کریں اور اپنی ممبر شپ ختم کریں اس ب چ تنظیم سے 😡
#ResignBabarRaoAPPNA