US concerned at reports of violation of basic religious freedoms in Pakistan

WASHINGTON: The US Department of State on Tuesday said that it’s extremely concerned by the reports of “systematic ongoing violations of fundamental religious freedoms” in Pakistan.

“We are always concerned by incidents of religiously motivated violence,” the department’s spokesperson, Matthew Miller, said that violence or the threat of violence against another person was never an acceptable form of expression.

“We oppose blasphemy laws everywhere in the world including Pakistan because they jeopardize the exercise of human rights and fundamental freedoms including the freedom of religion or belief,” he said during the daily press briefing. He also shared condolences to the family of the victim of the Swat mob violence incident and wished recovery to those injured. He further said that the US continues to urge Pakistani authorities to respect the human rights and fundamental freedoms of all. “We make that clear, both publicly and privately, this includes freedom of religion, freedom of expression, freedom of association and the right to peaceful assembly,” he said stressing that “we regularly engage with our Pakistani counterpart on issues of human rights including religious freedom and the treatment of religious minorities.”

The spokesperson said that the US has made this clear not only in Pakistan‘s designation as a Country of Particular Concern but also in the department’s annual international religious freedom report and country report on human rights practices.

Responding to a separate question about the new military operation, Azm-e-Istehkam, aimed to curb the surge in violence and armed attacks within the country, the spokesperson acknowledged that Pakistani people have suffered tremendously from terrorist attacks. “No country should have to suffer such acts of terror. The US and Pakistan have a shared interest in combating threats to regional security,” he said, adding that the US supports Pakistan’s efforts to combat terrorism and ensure the safety and security of its citizens in a manner that promotes the rule of law and protection of human rights.

“Our partnership with Pakistan on security issues includes our high-level counterterrorism dialogue including funding robust counterterrorism capacity building programmes and supporting a series of US-Pakistan military to military engagement,” he said.

The State department on Monday put out its annual “Trafficking in Persons” report placing both Pakistan and India in its Tier-2 category. It pointed out that India and Pakistan do not fully meet the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking but were making efforts to do so.

When it comes to Pakistan, those efforts included increasing prosecutions and convicting more traffickers - including for forced labour crimes, establishing an NRM, referring more victims to protection services, and establishing a national anti-trafficking hotline. The Pakistani government also launched an integrated system to collect national anti-trafficking data. Yet, efforts to criminally investigate, prosecute, and convict bonded labour and domestic servitude and proactively identify and assist such victims remained inadequate compared to the scale of these crimes and inspection efforts remained insufficient to effectively enforce labour laws. Victim protection services, especially shelter, remained inadequate and there were reports of revictimisation, it said.

The report estimated that more than 70 percent of bonded labourers in Pakistan were children, predominately working in brick kilns and agriculture, with some children forced into domestic work in landowners’ houses.

Experts estimate 4.5 million workers nationwide are trapped in bonded labour, primarily in Sindh and Punjab provinces. Traffickers, including local government officials, force men, women, and children to work primarily in bonded labour in Sindh in agriculture and in both Sindh and Punjab in brick kilns, and also in forced begging and the coal and carpet industries.

Traffickers also force men, women, and children to work to pay off exaggerated debts in other sectors in Sindh, Punjab, Balochistan, and KP in agriculture and brick kilns and, to a lesser extent, in fisheries, mining, and the manufacturing of textiles, bangles, and carpets, according to the report.

It also identified that human traffickers exploit domestic and foreign victims in Pakistan, and traffickers exploit victims from Pakistan abroad. “The country’s largest human trafficking problem is bonded labour, in which traffickers exploit an initial debt assumed by a worker as part of the terms of employment and ultimately entrap other family members, sometimes for generations; bonded labour disproportionately affects religious and ethnic minorities,” the report said.