Financial Action Task Force (FATF) is set to decide whether or not Pakistan will be added to its blacklist. In light of this, dissidents from Baloch, Hong Kong, Pashtun, Tibet and Uyghurs from East Turkestan already started protesting outside the FATF Headquarters in Paris, demanding that Pakistan be blacklisted so it can stop funding terrorist organisations.
Protest organizers said that while Pakistan had been repeatedly adopting the tactic of showcasing taking action against terror financing by placing senior terror group leaders under arrest ahead of FATF plenaries, those UN listed entities, like the Lashkar-e-Taiba (now rebranded as Jamat ud Dawa -JuD) and Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) continued to function freely in the country, including collecting funds.
The organizers said that the charity front of JuD, the Falah e Insaniyat Foundation (FeF) had continued to collect funds, FeF chief Hafiz Abdur Rauf had remained active and openly delivered sermons. They added that Talha Saeed, son of Jamaat ud Dawa leader Hafiz Saeed and a designated a terrorist by the US Treasury dept, had been active and addressed gatherings in recent months, the JuD offices, including the Markaz Al Quds in Lahore, are also able to raise funds to meet their monthly expenditures. They added that the JuD’s social media team functioned unhindered advertising their fund collection drives.
Protest organizers went on to say that the Jaish-e-Muhammad (JeM) had also been openly collecting funds, often to support families of ‘martyrs’ or jihadists killed during operations. They said that in order to avoid detection by FATF, Pakistan had moved JeM training camps and fighters to Afghanistan.
