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SAN FRANCISCO, Ca (April 3, 2006) –
The Hindu American Foundation (HAF) and the American Jewish
Committee (AJC) today condemned the references to Hindus and
Jews in a pamphlet airdropped by the Pakistani military. The
Reuters news agency reported that the pamphlets, which were
airdropped over tribal regions near the Afghan border, warned
tribesmen that “foreign terrorists” operating
in the region were part of a Hindu and Jewish plot and therefore
were posing threats to Pakistan's integrity and tribal society.
The Urdu and Pashto language pamphlets, titled
“Warning” and signed “Well Wishers, Pakistan's
Armed Forces”, were dropped over major towns in the
Waziristan province as part of a campaign to flush out Taliban
and al Qaeda militants living among the tribesmen. The Reuters
report said that although military spokesman Major-General
Shaukat Sultan said he could not confirm that pamphlets were
sponsored by the Pakistani military, local residents said
that they saw military aircraft scattering the pamphlets over
their neighborhoods.
“Although we support the objective
of drawing the local populace away from supporting the Taliban
and Al Qaeda, we are concerned about the outright falsehood
contained in the pamphlet, which suggests that foreign militants
in the region were fighting in connivance with Jews and Hindus”,
said Ernest H. Weiner, Executive Director of the Northern
California Region of the American Jewish Committee. “With
local events having a global impact as illustrated by the
controversy over the Danish cartoons, this could further inflame
sentiments against Hindus and Jews, who already bear the brunt
of substantial terrorist violence in India and Israel”.
The pamphlets accusations are not entirely
new. In March 2004, a spokesman for Lashkar-e-Toiba, one of
the Pakistan-based terror groups operating in Kashmir was
quoted in Greater Kashmir newspaper saying, “…..Yahud
(Jews) and Hanood (Hindus) are two sides of the same coin.”
“Not only do such pamphlets promote
hate on Hindus and Jews, who have nothing to do with the extremism
in Pakistan, it also calls into question Pakistan’s
commitment to the ongoing two-year peace process with India
and recent diplomatic initiatives with Israel”, said
Swaminathan Venkataraman, Executive Council Member of the
Hindu American Foundation. “The reference to Jews and
Hindus is all the more disturbing since Pakistan’s President
Pervez Musharraf is also the chief of Pakistan’s armed
forces.”
HAF and AJC call upon the Pakistani military
to withdraw the pamphlets and publicly dissociate itself from
its contents. President Musharraf’s promise to modernize
his nation cannot be fulfilled until he flushes out the Taliban
and al Qaeda militants and deals with the anti-Semitism and
Hinduphobia which one finds in segments of Pakistani society.
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