It was a day of setbacks for Pakistan as it was put on the 'Enhanced Expedited Follow Up List' by a subgroup of Financial Action Task Force (FATF) subgroup, Asia Pacific Group (APG); panned by US, UK and Canada for "persecuting and repressing" religious minorities, condemned by France for being a breeding ground for terrorism, and called out by Sri Lanka on its claim that the island nation's president had offered to mediate on the Kashmir issue.
Islamabad was issued a warning by Asia Pacific Group (APG) for failing to meet its commitments towards dealing with the financing of terrorist organizations from its soil as defined in the annual Mutual evaluation action plan.
The Islamic nation failed on 32 of the 40 compliance parameters, and its actions will be observed for one year now.
In France, Prime Minister Narendra Modi discussed cybersecurity, Artifical Intelligence, and terrorism with French President Emmanuel Macron. "Macron condemned terrorism in all form and manifestations saying it cannot be justified on any grounds, and called for halting cross-border movements of terror outfits including Jaish-e-Mohammed, Hizbul Mujahideen, Lashkar-e-Taiba which are based in Pakistan and engage in anti-India activities, particularly in Jammu and Kashmir," Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhale said.
In June, the global money-laundering watchdog set an October 2019 deadline for Pakistan to improve its counter-terror finance operations or face further action. Friday was the last day of the six-day APG meet in Canberra, Australia. "The reports for China, Chinese Taipei, Hong Kong, Pakistan, the Philippines and the Solomon Islands were analysed and discussed in detail over two full days and will now be subject to post-plenary quality and consistency review prior to publication," said a release. "...Pakistan would be required to submit follow-up progress reports to APG on a quarterly basis," it added.
Currently, two simultaneous action plans are underway to evaluate Pakistan's commitments towards acting against terror financing — mutual evaluation and the plenary. This review was on the Mutual Evaluation action plan. Friday's development makes it more difficult for the South Asian country to leave FATF's grey list and can expedite its process of blacklisting in October's FATF plenary.
After being greylisted in June 2018, Pakistan had made high-level political commitments to address its counter-terrorist financing-related deficiencies. FATF kept Pakistan pinned on the grey list in its June meeting, after failing to meet deadline twice — in January and May 2019.
On August 21, the Pakistan High Commission in Sri Lanka claimed that the island nation's President, Maithripala Sirisena, has acknowledged Jammu and Kashmir as a "disputed territory", Colombo on Thursday clarified that the president "did not make any such comments" on the issue. The Pakistan High Commission's press statement said High Commissioner Major General Shahid Ahmad Hashmat had called on Sirisena and apprised him on the current situation in Jammu and Kashmir in the wake of the abrogation of Article 370 in Jammu and Kashmir.
"The President acknowledged that Jammu and Kashmir is a disputed territory and expressed his desire that this dispute should be resolved according to wishes of Kashmiris under UN Resolutions. He also offered Sri Lanka's mediation and facilitation of dialogue between Pakistan and India," the statement read.
However, the Sri Lankan President's Media Division asserted that Srisena only gave "a patient hearing to the Pakistan High Commissioner's views. The President did not make any other comment on the issues pertaining to India and Pakistan."
Meanwhile, at a UN meeting on Safety of Religious Minorities in New York, the US, UK and Canada expressed concerns over the increasing, widespread and undue restrictions on religious freedom in Pakistan and China. They also highlighted the discrimination suffered by Christians, Ahmadis, Hindus and other minorities in Pakistan.
Naveed Walter, President of Human Rights Focus Pakistan, apprised the United Nations about the "biased behaviour". "Today, a large number of people are marginalised in their own societies. The biased behaviour dwells in other areas also, like the minorities on the basis of religious affiliation as in Pakistan, Ahmadis having a situation," he said.
Pakistan's discrimination against religious minorities has manifested in various forms of targeted violence, mass murders, extrajudicial killings, abduction, rapes, forced conversion to Islam, etc., making the Pakistani Hindus, Christians, Sikhs, Ahmadiyyas and Shias one of the most persecuted minorities in the region.
—Zee Media Newsroom
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