ISLAMABAD: Islamabad on Tuesday rejected as baseless a report in the British press claiming Pakistan-origin dissidents living in the United Kingdom and elsewhere in Europe in self-exile were on a so-called hit list of the country’s security agencies.
Citing intelligence sources, the report published last week in The Guardian claimed that Pakistan “might be prepared to target” dissidents, journalists and members of the Pashtun Tahafuz Movement on British soil.
To build its case, the story recalled last month, a man from east London was charged with conspiring with others unidentified to murder a self-exiled blogger, Ahmad Waqass Goraya, in the Netherlands.
Goraya is notorious for hurling vulgarities at women political activists through his Twitter handle. For this reason, his access to Twitter was recently suspended for a brief period.
In a statement, Foreign Office spokesperson Zahid Hafeez Chaudhri categorically rejected the unsubstantiated media report and said Pakistan, as a parliamentary democracy, protected the rights of its nationals living across the world.
“There is no question of any threat being made to any national of any state including Pakistan’s own nationals living anywhere on any pretext whatsoever,” he said in response to media queries on the matter.
Chaudhri said the unsubstantiated accusations appeared to be part of the ongoing disinformation campaign against Pakistan to malign the country and its institutions.
In December, the Brussels-based NGO unearthed a 15-year-old operation run by an Indian entity that used hundreds of fake media outlets and the identity of a dead professor to target Pakistan.
The agency, in its report titled Indian Chronicles, deep dived into a 15-year operation targeting the body and United Nations to “discredit Pakistan internationally”, termed this as the “largest network” of disinformation they have exposed so far.
“Pakistan is a parliamentary democracy with a vibrant civil society, free media and independent judiciary, which remains fully committed to the promotion and protection of human rights for all its citizens without discrimination,” the spokesperson said.
He expressed Islamabad’s strong commitment to the right to freedom of opinion and expression, something he observed was demonstrated by the presence of scores of vibrant media channels and newspapers.
“Provision of a platform for the peddling of unsubstantiated and false narratives against Pakistan by any news outlet is indeed regrettable,” he lamented.
