NEW DELHI: Pakistan’s domestic repression has long been perceived as an acceptable “structural cost” of geopolitical interests. Western newsrooms have historically underreported state violence in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) as well as in Pakistan's provinces of Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, with their editorial focus frequently aligning with the foreign policies of their respective governments. As a result, Pakistan has been portrayed primarily as a nuclear-armed rival of India instead of a nation that acts as the “mothership of terrorism”, a report has stated.
From those killed in Rawalakot and Mirpur in PoK to the disappeared youth of Balochistan, the victims represent the price of a global consensus that has consistently placed the facade of “stability” in a garrison state above the rights and freedoms of its people.
The demonstrators in PoK have little international support; they are not only being killed by Pakistani forces, but their bodies are also being removed from hospitals by paramilitary personnel in an apparent attempt to conceal the “massacre”, a report in 'Firstpost’ detailed.
“For the past few days, we have all been witness to the horrific images and video clips on social media emerging from places such as Rawalakot, Mirpur and Kotli in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK), where, in the run-up to the ‘elections’, a profound constitutional and humanitarian crisis is unfolding behind a wall of state-imposed censorship while the world offers a resigned shrug,” the report mentioned.
“The coverage in Western media of the state-sponsored killing under way in the Himalayan region has been so insipid, perfunctory and even devious that it is difficult to put it into words. Some of the world’s most notable newsrooms — which have so far been busy with breathless, wall-to-wall coverage of the NEET-related youth protests in India — have shown little concern for the dozens and dozens of civilians who have fallen to the bullets of Pakistani security forces,” it added.
According to the report, Pakistan’s designation as a major non-NATO ally has long suited the strategic calculus of the US — and its allies — which have preferred that the South Asian nation remain a “highly centralised garrison state” rather than a “fully functioning democracy”.
It noted that each time Pakistan's security apparatus has used state violence to suppress domestic dissent — from Balochistan and Waziristan to Islamabad and PoK — Western media and policy-making circles have largely remained silent, prioritising the strategic utility of the military establishment over democratic principles.
The report noted that the more pressing concern is the role of the international community, especially the newsrooms and policy institutes in Washington, London, Paris, Berlin and Brussels, which have consistently turned a blind eye to the pattern of Islamabad’s internal coercion. It attributed this to Pakistan's hedging strategy, its readiness to serve the highest bidder, and its longstanding utility to the Western geopolitical calculations.
“As a classic ‘rentier state’, Pakistan’s military and ruling elite derive institutional dominance and financial sustenance not from internal resources, taxation or industrial productivity, but from external rents generated by leasing its strategic geography and security apparatus to foreign patrons,” it stated.
--IANS
