To mark the Global Day of Action, social activist Raja Jahangir Akhtar on Thursday announced yet another hunger strike, this time over military spending.
While addressing a press conference at National Press Club, Akhtar said that the purchase of expensive defence equipment has exceeded $650 billion and is steadily increasing. This year Pakistan was listed as the fourth largest importer of heavy fighting equipment.
Highlighting the reasons for his strike, Akhtar said that Pakistan’s military ranks 15th out of 189 countries in military spending. While the annual defence budget is Rs500 billion on paper, it is actually close to Rs800 billion. We spend nearly one billion US dollars annually on purchasing armaments from abroad, he added.
Akhtar further said that Pakistani establishment has accorded highest priority to military spending from day one, but human development has been ignored.
Pakistan ranks 145 on the human development index, out of a total 187 countries of the world. A number of Sub-Saharan African countries have started doing better than us, he added. Akhtar was of the view that the issue of “misplaced priorities” was the one that needed to be highlighted.
Rest of the world believes in providing better education and health facilities to its citizens, but in Pakistan national security is far more important than human security, he added.
Published in The Express Tribune, April 13th, 2012.
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