Pakistan should address global concerns on terrorism: India
New Delhi: With Pakistan being asked by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) to implement its action plan to stop terror financing by September, India on Saturday said the neighboring country should take “credible” and “irreversible” steps to address global concerns related to terrorism.
External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said Pakistan should take all necessary steps to effectively implement the FATF action plan to counter terror financing operations.
Pakistan has already been put by the FATF on the “grey list” of countries with insufficient controls to tackle money laundering and terror financing.
“We expect Pakistan to take all necessary steps to effectively implement the FATF Action Plan fully within the remaining time frame i.e. by September 2019 in accordance with its political commitment to the FATF,” the MEA spokesperson said.
“Pakistan should take credible, verifiable, irreversible and sustainable measures to address global concerns related to terrorism and terrorist financing emanating from any territory under its control,” he added.
The comment came in response to a media query regarding the FATF warning Pakistan to improve its counter-terror financing operations in line with an internationally agreed action plan by October or face action.
The FATF has also expressed its concerns over Pakistan’s failure to complete the action plan first by a January deadline, and again by May.
The FATF said it will decide the next step after September.
India should address US concerns on religious freedom in India. The US report states:
“In 2018, religious freedom conditions in India continued a downward trend,” the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) Report, 2019, said.
India’s “history of religious freedom has come under attack in recent years with the growth of exclusionary extremist narratives — including, at times, the government’s allowance and encouragement of mob violence against religious minorities — that have facilitated an egregious and ongoing campaign of violence, intimidation, and harassment against non-Hindu and lower-caste Hindu minorities. Both public and private actors have engaged in this campaign”, it said.
“In 2018, approximately one-third of state governments increasingly enforced anti-conversion and/or anti-cow slaughter laws discriminatorily against non-Hindus and Dalits alike. Further, cow protection mobs engaged in violence, predominantly targeting Muslims and Dalits, some of whom have been legally involved in the dairy, leather or beef trades for generations.”
It said “mob violence was also carried out against Christians under accusations of forced or induced religious conversion”.