UK minister’s remarks on Pakistani men misleading
Pakistan has urged India to curb the rising tide of Islamophobic and hateful acts against Muslims.
At her weekly news briefing in Islamabad Wednesday, Foreign Office Spokesperson Mumtaz Zahra Baloch expressed deep concern over alarming rise in violence against Muslims in India, after latest such acts in eight states of the country.
She called on India to take demonstrable steps for protection of Muslims enabling them to practice their faith and hold accountable those responsible for such hateful acts.
Welcoming OIC’s statement in this regard, the spokesperson noted that terrifying rise in Islamophobia in India was consequence of majoritarian Hindutva agenda and anti-Muslim rife in Indian politics.
She reiterated Pakistan’s concern about well-being of Kashmiri leaders and human rights defenders incarcerated in India and Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir and impressed upon India to end suppression of journalists and human rights defenders.
Responding to a question about remarks of Indian external affairs minister, the Foreign Office Spokesperson said the remarks reflect Indian politicians’ unhealthy obsession with Pakistan after they failed to malign and isolate Pakistan at diplomatic front.
She said Indian politicians, in their anti-Pakistan rhetoric, very conveniently overlook the developments in their country where the social fabric has been ripped apart due to the extremist Hindutva ideology.
The Foreign Office spokesperson Mumtaz Zahra Baloch on Wednesday objected to the “discriminatory and xenophobic” comments made by the British Home Secretary Suella Braverman on Pakistani men saying that it presented a “misleading picture.”
Braverman claimed that British-Pakistani men “hold cultural values at odds with British values.” She made the comments during an interview about strategies to combat child sexual assault.
Reacting to the statement in a presser on Wednesday, Mumtaz Zahra Baloch said the remarks painted a highly misleading picture signalling the intent to target and treat British Pakistanis differently, adding that the UK home secretary had “erroneously branded criminal behaviour of some individuals as a representation of the entire community”.
