Time for Islamabad to pull out of OIC, says Pak Senator

Islamabad, Sep 2 (IANS) It is high time for Pakistan to pull out of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) as it is "worse than the United Nations", former Senate Chairman Mian Raza Rabbani has said, adding that the "bubble of an Islamic Ummah had burst".

Taking part in a discussion on Kashmir in the Senate, the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) leader said that Islamabad should reprise its relations with the Ummah.

Recalling that the OIC had failed to act whenever Pakistan or any other Muslim country faced a difficult situation, Rabbani referred to the 1990s genocide in Bosnia and the ethnic cleansing in Palestine. "The world has become too profit oriented and focused on economic interests."

He cited as examples a $15 billion deal signed recently between Aramco -- the Saudi-owned oil giant -- and India's largest conglomerate Reliance, conferment of the United Arab Emirates's highest civil award on Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and signing of MoUs during the first-ever visit to Bahrain by an Indian Premier last week to drive home the point that Muslim countries "were too busy minding their own business to bother about issues like Kashmir", Dawn newspaper reported.

Rabbani said that Parliament needed to inform all human rights organisations about "the uninterrupted curfew and the state of human rights in India-occupied Kashmir".

"Pakistan should move an emergency motion at the general assembly of the Inter-Parliamentary Union in October and raise violation of human rights at the IPU's meeting in Maldives next month," he said.

According to Rabbani, Parliament should try to convene special meetings of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association and the Asian Parliamentary Association to raise awareness about the Kashmir issue.

"Parliament should prepare a list of all international treaties and covenants signed by India and inform the world how it's violating them today in Kashmir," he added.

The former Senate Chairman said Pakistan should ask the UN Commission on Human Rights to convene a meeting on the matter and call upon the world body to send observers to Kashmir. "We should now focus on Asia and end our alignment with Washington."

In his speech, Senator Rehman Malik said "crimes against humanity committed by the Indian forces made Narendra Modi liable to trial by the International Criminal Court".

"I have already prepared a petition for filing with the ICC."

Mushahid Hussain Sayed of the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) suggested that the strategy with regard to India should now be "Modi-specific and expose him as fascist and racist".

Sayed said that the nation must keep its own house in order to ensure that the international community took its stance on major issue seriously.

"It's unthinkable that on one hand we have turmoil, instability, repression and division at home and, on the other, we run an effective foreign policy. We need a healing touch at home first."

The senator called for immediate release of former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, former President Asif Ali Zardari and two lawmakers belonging to the Pashtun Tahaffuz Movement. All "political prisoners" should be released as well, he added.

The upper house unanimously passed a resolution condemning the "annexation of occupied Kashmir by India", describing it as a "BJP-RSS move to change the region's demography in furtherance of their racist and fascist agenda".

The resolution, moved by Shibli Faraz, said the "annexation" was an attempt to undermine the UN Charter, the international law and UN Security Council resolution.