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TechnoratiUS Revokes Visa of Pakistan Rights Defender
The United States has revoked the travel visa of a Pakistani rights defender ahead of her trip to Washington to highlight the plight of hundreds of missing compatriots allegedly rounded up as part of the "war on terror," the rights group Amnesty has said.
![[File photo shows a Customs and Border Protection officer at Miami International Airport in Florida. The USA has revoked the travel visa of a Pakistani rights defender ahead of her trip to Washington to highlight the plight of hundreds of missing compatriots allegedly rounded up as part of the "war on terror," the rights group Amnesty has said. (AFP/Getty Images/File/Joe Raedle)]](http://www.commondreams.org/files/article_images/0916-0a.jpg "0916-0a.jpg")
Amina Janjua, founder of Defense of Human Rights, was about to take a flight from Geneva to Washington Saturday when she was informed by a US diplomat by telephone that the visa issued to her had been cancelled, an Amnesty official said.
"It is extremely unfortunate that the United States revoked her visa," Amnesty's Washington-based Asia-Pacific director for advocacy T. Kumar told AFP.
"We hope they would reconsider the decision," said Kumar, who was also informed by the US diplomat about the visa's cancellation.
Amnesty had arranged Janjua's week-long US trip and had confirmed her meetings with senior State Department officials and congressional staff, Kumar said.
US officials were not immediately available for comment.
Janjua has visited Norway, Sweden, Germany and Switzerland as part of her tour to raise awareness of what Amnesty calls "enforced disappearances" by the Pakistani government since it joined the US-led war on terror in 2001.
Her husband is among 563 people who had disappeared, according to Defense of Human Rights.
Amnesty said they were arbitrarily detained and held in secret facilities mostly for suspicion of links to terrorist activity.
Some were also secretly handed over to the US authorities, often for financial reward, ending up in US Navy-run prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and secret CIA detention centers, Amnesty said.
The group said it had used official court records and affidavits of victims and witnesses of enforced disappearances to confront the Pakistani authorities, who have denied any knowledge of their whereabouts.
Janjua herself has presented to the Pakistan Supreme Court with an affidavit from five people declaring that her husband, who went missing in 2005, was held at various places of detention by the country's intelligence agency.
10 Comments so far
Show AllThe so-called "Global War on Terror" exists only in the skulls of the elites, the illegitimate "authorities". The people, targets of the elite's class war aggression, do not recognise the "GWOT".
This is angering, yet also bears good, for the European countries that received Amina Janjua nicely helped to place emphasis on the insanity of the Bush-Cheney cabal and their zillions of "law" enforcement brownshirts from various U.S. govt departments and agencies.
It should only help to expose the ridiculous self-adulatory, ..., perverted (extremely) ways of the Bush-Cheney cabal and their many allies and hidden ruling elites, given they all are clearly supporting the Bush administration; only expressing an occasional burp of "upset stomach" due to things not going the way the ruling elites would prefer, but while their way is still one of Hell's makings. It helps to expose their lies only [more], and I welcome all exposures of these ugly realities.
"Saloo297 September 16th, 2008 2:23 pm
This proves once for all US is not interested in peace as it challanges its military complex"
It doesn't "prove once for all" and the reason is that the proof came years ago already. We had that in even very obvious terms in 2001 and 2002, only we need to be paying [attention] with our own [thinking] minds, hearts, souls, [independently]. And to give the people who were initially fooled, instead of thinking critically and quickly, a break, we nevertheless had more than enough proof with the then obviously unjustifiable threat, let alone the later official launch, of the war on Iraq. About all we really needed to be able to realise this is to be [real] peace and justice makers; and being a real P&J maker requires being of the principle that revenge is [unacceptable] conduct.
The very, very latter, is one of the reasons for doing totally away with the death penalty, for it [is] revenge. After all, the person who committed the murder is already secured away from society and has therefore ceased to represent or be a threat to society. To still put such people to death is perverted, blood cult, to treat ourselves as if we're God or as if incapable of serious errors, etcetera.
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"Saila September 16th, 2008 1:47 pm
The regime is as scared of freedom of speech and democracy as a vampire is of daylight."
THAT is because the regime is 'empire', and what do those have? Dictators, usually anyway. I'm not expert on this topic, but believe that empires are always, or else usually, run by dicatorship.
"I would not have taken the word of that diplomat. Instead, I would’ve hopped on the plane and arrived here just to see what happens next.
They don’t have a Gitmo for women yet, do they?"
PLENTY in Abu Ghuraib! The Iraqi woman there surely (I think) didn't number as many as Iraqi men, but woman were also put in these U.S.-controolled prisons in Iraq; and also many children were. And Guatanamo Bay is only one of many of these GWoT prisons the U.S. has. Also, it'd be very easy for the Bush administration to deport her back to Pakistan, or to rendition her to Afghanistan, to be imprisoned there.
Are you just starting to pay attention to what's been going on for several years now; or, was this just a momentary lapse of memory? You need not reply; it's not a question posed with any intention of expecting a response. This is just a little FYI.
In my opinion: Life in jail is a fiercer punishment than death. Death begins the justice process. When you're billions of murders in as a few are, I'd think you're best to not delay the payback. It'd be absolute torture, being held in a prison cell for the rest of your life, knowing when you die you'll be the most suffered of lifeforms then long. I'm guessing most of the cowards who have so brutalized people to be complicit with billions of murders would choose life in jail, some might even enjoy it. I think for the rest of their lives they would be hoping for a way out and then to access regenerative medicine.
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www.lamegame.name
Daniel Vincent Kelley
Thanks for reporting this Agence France Presse. It might be a while before it's front page on the NYT.
This proves once for all
US is not interested in peace as it challanges its military complex
and if
a few million people die so be it (at least the military industrial complex is thiriving).
The regime is as scared of freedom of speech and democracy as a vampire is of daylight. The freedom and democracy Bushite style is in plain view for the world to see in Afghanistan and Iraq.
I would not have taken the word of that diplomat. Instead, I would’ve hopped on the plane and arrived here just to see what happens next.
They don’t have a Gitmo for women yet, do they?
Yeah, you know how dangerous those peace activist are... best not to let them travel at all otherwise you might have peace breaking out everywhere.
The saddest thing about this story is that it is not at all surprising. What is surprising is that her visa was issued in the first place.
The campaign to suppress the free flow of information, initiated by this administration and implemented by the corporate media, is proceeding unabated.
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