Washington: The European Union (EU) has faced growing criticism for allegedly enabling Pakistan’s severe abuses of human rights standards since at least 2014, with observers repeatedly warning of the consequences and calling for significant change.
Brussels-based organisation ‘Human Rights Without Frontiers’ (HRWF), for example, described the Generalised Scheme of Preferences Plus (GSP-plus) status granted to Pakistan as “the bad deal between the EU and Pakistan”, adding that “The GSP-plus should be suspended as long as there is no substantial human rights progress,” a report has stated.
Pakistan has failed to demonstrate meaningful progress in implementing international human rights standards since the agreement came into effect in 2014. The country’s Christian community also continues to face serious human rights abuses and is most adversely impacted by the resulting failure, Uzay Bulut, a Turkish journalist, wrote in American media outlet PJ Media.
“Christians compose less than two per cent of Pakistan’s population, enduring severe systemic and societal persecution. They frequently face mob violence, deadly blasphemy laws, economic exclusion or exploitation, abductions, rapes, and forced conversions. The EU, however, keeps rewarding the country with a massive economic lifeline,” Bulut highlighted.
“Pakistan has been a significant beneficiary of the European Union’s GSP-plus since 2014. They are granted duty-free or preferential tariff access to the EU market for over 66 per cent of its tariff lines. However, Pakistan’s government continues to abuse the EU’s generosity as well as the basic human rights of its minority citizens,” she added.
Highlighting the plight of religious minorities across Pakistan, Bulut cited the case of a 14-year-old girl who was abducted on May 12 by a married Muslim man. Her father and legal counsel alleged that the man forcibly converted her to Islam and married her, while exploiting her mental health vulnerabilities to sexually abuse her.
Her father, Abbas Masih, a daily wage labourer and member of a local Brethren church in Lahore’s Gulbahar Colony, told Christian Daily International-Morning Star News that his daughter, Nisha Bibi, went missing while working as a domestic helper in a Muslim household.
“Legal, religious and cultural norms reinforce extreme gender inequality in Pakistan, with Christian girls vulnerable to abduction, forced conversion and marriage,” Bulut stated.
Expressing concerns over the persecution of minorities, she further said that despite the human rights violations, Pakistan continues to significantly benefit from the trading opportunities under the GSP scheme.
“The country continues to fail in all those same fields in which it has pledged to make progress (human and labour rights, as well as good governance), particularly when minorities are involved,” Bulut noted.
(IANS)
