Author: Editorial
Publication: The Pioneer
Date: April 6, 2012
URL: http://www.dailypioneer.com/columnists/item/51379-ignored-by-the-world.html

Pakistani jackboots in Gilgit-Baltistan

At least 15 people have died and 50 others injured as sectarian violence recently broke out in the Gilgit-Baltistan area of Pakistan Occupied Kashmir, but the Government of India has virtually ignored the incident. For decades now, New Delhi has painstakingly cultivated a consistent disinterest in the happenings in what it has maintained is legally its territory. If Gilgit-Baltistan is legally a part of India, its residents are the responsibility of the Union Government and its sovereignty is to be guarded by the Indian state. Unfortunately, there is nothing in the conduct of India to show that it cares. In fact, New Delhi seems to have virtually ceded the territory to Islamabad. Affairs of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir barely feature on the Government’s agenda. The Government does not even take the trouble any more to fill up the seats reserved for PoK representatives in the Jammu & Kashmir Legislative Assembly. And, while New Delhi looks the other way, Islamabad continues to tighten its grip on the region in the most vicious and violent manner. Unlike the rest of PoK which is primarily Sunni Islamic in nature, the Gilgit-Baltistan area has had a Shia-majority population. For the past two and a half decades, Pakistan has slowly but steadily worked to change that demography and convert it into a radical Sunni Islamic region. That started with the invasion of Gilgit by armed tribesmen who killed hundreds of Shia families in 1988, ostensibly under  orders from then Pakistani President, General Zia-ul-Haq, whose lasting legacy remains the radicalisation of his country. Since then, there has been a relentless onslaught on the region’s Shia population. The Pakistani state has played a nefarious part by repealing the State Subjects Order, thus opening the doors for outsiders to migrate to the region. Consequently, large numbers of Sunni Muslims have moved into the Gilgit-Baltistan area, much to alarm of its native Shia population. Tehsils and taluka borders have also been redrawn in order to place the Shias in a minority, while rabid Sunni clerics have been encouraged to settle in the area and poison popular opinion.