Plight of the Unpeople: The News (Pakistan)

2010-04-14

The News (Pakistan) - Letters to the Editor

The mysterious way in which Maryam Siddiqui, the daughter of Dr Aafia Siddiqui, turned up at her relatives' home in Karachi raises some disturbing questions. If Dr Aafia Siddiqui was indeed captured by US authorities, then it is a mockery of the Pakistani security setup that the US intelligence agencies operate unhindered on Pakistani soil, pick up a citizen of Pakistan whenever they want and drop them off whenever and wherever they like. Are these foreign agencies accountable to anyone? How can the Pakistani security agencies not trace the captors of Maryam Siddiqui? Who is going to pay for the ordeal through which Maryam and her family went during all these years? On the other hand, if the arrest of Dr Aafia Siddiqui and her children was not the work of foreign agencies, is it correct to assume that Maryam Siddiqui has been a prisoner of her country's own security agencies? In either case, whether Dr Aafia Siddiqui's family suffered at the hands of the US or her own country, her case symbolises the horrific and inhumane nature of the war on terror which has brought death and destruction to millions of people in South Asia.

The consensus verdict of the New York jury against Dr Aafia Siddiqui, declaring her guilty, shows that the disregard for human rights and justice is institutionally ingrained in western polity. Dr Aafia Siddiqui's case and the war on terror help us understand the disillusionment of the Muslim world from the west and its ideals.

Moez Mobeen

Islamabad

*****

It is good that Dr Aafia Siddiqui's daughter, Maryam Siddiqui, is with her family now. I am pleased that the girl has joined her relatives at last. I hope that Interior Minister Rehman Malik will help recover the still missing son of Dr Aafia Siddiqui. Mr Rehman should pressurise American authorities and get Dr Alafia Siddiqui released along with all those Pakistanis who are detained illegally by the Americans.

Mubashir Mahmood

Karachi

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Vietnamese

"If you really want to get a sense of “what happened” in Vietnam ... just imagine that you’re actually crouched in your basement, that your home above is ablaze, that lethal helicopters are hovering overhead, and that heavily-armed teenagers — foreigners who don’t speak your language — are out there in your yard, screaming commands you don’t understand, rolling grenades into your neighbor’s cellar, and if you run out through the flames, into the chaos, one of them might just shoot you." - Nick Turse

America

“Everywhere I go, every town I visit, you don’t see any industries. You don’t see any factories. You don’t see anything. We don’t make anything. We are really the poorest country on earth, but people refuse to see that. We are only surviving. We are only looking good because of our military might, because we are an empire. But this force cannot go on forever. It should be so obvious that we’re only chugging along, bullying people into lending us money and sending us stuff that we don’t deserve, that we haven’t earned. How can we survive? Hundreds of thousands of Americans have been reduced to living like savages in this self-proclaimed greatest country on earth.” - Linh Dinh

Chagossians

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