An international NGO based out of the Netherlands, Global Human Rights Defence (GHRD), organized a press conference centred around the issue of human rights violations in Pakistan and China. The conference was attended by Dr Naseer Dashti of Baloch Human Rights Council (BHRC) and Dr Lakhu Luhana of the World Sindhi Congress.
Emma Barnard, coordinator for team Pakistan at GHRD, whose research is focused on atrocities against minority and marginalized groups in Pakistan, said, “We think of women and children, disabled children, religious minorities such as Hindus and the Christians but also the LGBTQ plus community. They continuously face issues such as force conversions, forced marriages, honour killings a discriminatory application of the blasphemy laws.”
Dr Lakhu Luhana of the World Sindhi Congress apprised attendees of the ordeals that the people of Sindh face in Pakistan. “More than 67 per cent of girls are out of education in Pakistan. There is 80 per cent of the schools don’t have water or sanitation facilities. According to the supreme court, the drinking water that the people of Sindh use, 80 per cent of it not suitable for even animal consumption and creating a pandemic of disease,” Dr Luhana.
At the conference, Marco Respinti, Director-in-Charge of Bitter Winter, an online magazine on religious liberty and human rights all over the world, commented on religious freedom in China. He stated, “In China today, there is what we call, the war on the very idea of god. Communist China has always judged religion as unnatural and thus sooner and later doomed to extinction while awaiting this faith the CCP has contributed to reaching the extinction of religion with varying degrees of harshness.”
