Protest the ongoing massacre of Pashtun people in Northern Pakistan by the Taliban

[darrels joy]

Protest the ongoing massacre of Pashtun people in Northern Pakistan by the Taliban


First ever anti-Taliban rally planned for Toronto

By Judi McLeod Thursday, February 12, 2009


The first ever Pashtun, anti-Taliban rally is planned for Toronto on Sunday.
Pashtuns Canadian of Pakistan and Afghanistan origin are organizing the anti-Taliban rally “to protest the ongoing massacre of Pashtun people in Northern Pakistan by the Taliban”, says Inayat Khan Kakar, of the Canadian Pashtun Community in a media communique. “In our first ever anti-Taliban rally in Canada, we are protesting outside Queen’s Park to highlight the unreported “Genocide of 52 million Pashtuns” by the Taliban and militants.”

Pashtuns , here and abroad, are concerned that their “once peaceful and serene Swat Valley in northern Pakistan has now been transformed into another Afghanistan by the Taliban.”

Pashtuns are the majority of the population in Afghanistan and represent the largest ethnic minority in Pakistan.

Pashtuns, were prominent during the Afghan-Soviet War (1979-1989) as members of the Mujahideen. During the war against the Soviets and the civil war that followed, approximately 2 million Pashtuns fled to Pakistan as refugees. But the government of President Burhanuddin Rabbani, which seized power when the Afghanistan Soviet-backed government collapsed in 1992, fought to exclude Pashtuns from the most important positions.

Prominent Pashtun leader, Hamid Karzai, was named interim leader of Afghanistan and Karzai, who chose Ahmed Zia Massoud, the brother of legendary Afghan hero Ahmed Shah Massoud, to serve in his cabinet as first Vice President of Afghanistan, became the first elected president of Afghanistan in 2004.

Pakistan-based journalist Hamid Mir reported in a Canada Free Press (CFP) yesterday that the local Taliban leadership in Pakistan has decided to send its fighters to Islamabad in reaction to the operations in Darra Adamkhel and Swat Valley and had issued a “hit list” of religious scholars they accuse of being collaborators of the “pro-American Zardari government”, which according to the Taliban is no different than the previous ousted Musharraf regime.

Many religious scholars whose names appear on the hit list are being ordered to leave the capital.

Taliban leader Maulvi Omar Khalid has threatened boys belonging to the banned Lashkar-e-Taiba to leave the tribal agency--or face death.

“The Foreign Office in Islamabad is under a lot of diplomatic pressure after the brutal killing of kidnapped Polish engineer Piotr Stanczak to “do more” for the release of a kidnapped Chinese engineer, one Afghan diplomat, one Iranian diplomat and one kidnapped UN diplomat in Quetta, but the civilian, as well as the Army leadership, have decided not to bow down to pressure,” Mir wrote in his CFP story yesterday.

“While hundreds of innocent people have been beheaded and butchered, 300 educational institutions have been bombed and destroyed, people on the ground perceive that the Pakistan ISI/military is supporting the Taliban because of the infectity (sic) of the operation and (are) intentionally fanning extremist religious thought in the region,” says the Canadian Pashtun Community in its media communique. “Out of the 1.7 million local population about 700,000 people already have been forced to migrate to other areas by the war.

“We want to educate and apprise fellow Canadians, the Canadian media and journalists of this unreported genocide by the Taliban, who are massacring Pashtuns in the name of Islam.

“We are urging Canadian newspapers and TV networks to send photographers, videographers and reporters to talk to hundreds of Pashtun women, children and men whose family members are being killed in Pakistan’s Pashtun areas on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.”

The protest is being held between 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. Sunday in front of the Ontario Legislative Building, Queen’s Park.

More information is available through Inayat Khan Kakar at telephone number 905-277-2854; (647) 895-6566.

http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/8417