Better late than never: Nisar wants new safety audit for minorities

Orders home departments to revise security protocols with intelligence surveillance

ISLAMABAD:

In the wake of increasing attacks against minorities, the country’s security czar has directed all provinces to come up with rigorous safety plans incorporating intelligence surveillance for the security of minority communities.

“Protecting our minorities should be your utmost priority,” Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan directed the provincial police chiefs on Thursday while chairing an important meeting in Islamabad to discuss multiple security issues.

He ordered all provincial home departments to conduct a security audit of the minority communities, including Hindus, Christians, Ismailis, Sikhs and Bohras, by establishing new intelligence surveillance systems and prepare a special security plan within a week.

The interior minister asked the provinces to train and equip law enforcement personnel to protect the minorities’ places of worship also and enhance police patrolling at their gatherings. “Special surveillance of minorities’ worship places should be carried out by intelligence agencies,” he said tasking the civilian intelligence agency – Intelligence Bureau – with the job.



The interior ministry will be given weekly briefings by provincial home departments on the security monitoring of non-Muslims.

He even suggested issuing weapons licences to the minority community members for their better security. Currently there is a ban on issuance of new arms licences as a new policy is being formulated at the federal level to control proliferation of guns in the country.

“We want to introduce a new mechanism for arms licences for controlling guns in the country,” Chaudhry Nisar commented. “We are in a war-like situation. We cannot afford free flow of weapons.”

On the issue of placing people on the Exit Control List (ECL), the interior minister directed the agencies, departments and organisations concerned to justify their stance on enlisting thousands of people.

Names of more than 7,500 people are placed on the ECL while hundreds of them have been on this list since 1996-97. The government is reviewing the laws related to banning people from going abroad.

About the people blacklisted, Immigration and Passports Director General Usman Bajwa told the minister that around 12,000 passports had been blacklisted.

On the suspension of prisoner exchange agreements with other countries, the interior minister admitted that thousands of Pakistani nationals were jailed in different countries but questioned whether the authorities had the space to accommodate these prisoners in the country’s jails.

Interior Secretary Shahid Khan said some parameters to bring these prisoners back on humanitarian basis could be devised by restoring these agreements. “Many people are innocent but languishing in foreign jails,” he claimed.

The interior minister directed his subordinates to prepare some recommendations whereby elderly, innocent and other cases could be considered under the said agreement.


Published in The Express Tribune, May 22^nd, 2015.