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Indo-Pak tit-for-tat expulsions |
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After a short breather, India and Pakistan are once again up to their old game of tit-for-tat expulsion of each other’s officials. Stung by the expulsion of P. Moses, an Indian employee of the Indian High Commission in Islamabad, New Delhi on Jan. 19 expelled Shabir Hussain Shah, a member of the Pakistan High Commission staff in New Delhi. Pakistan deputy high commissioner, Akbar Zeb was summoned to South Block on Jan. 19 and given two official complaints. In one, India rejected allegations that Moses was trying to encourage terrorist activities in Pakistan. The other claimed that shah’s activities were incompatible with his official status and therefore he was being expelled.
Describing the allegations against Mr. Moses as “fanciful and far fetched”, South Block officials told zeb that Islamabad’s actions were “part of its propaganda campaign directed at covering its own involvement in cross border terrorism and blurring its own track record. The Pakistan Deputy High Commissioner was told that the fact Moses was not questioned or asked about his contact in the Indian High Commission in Islamabad clearly indicated that the charges against him were spurious.
Pakistan expelled the Mr. P. Moses, giving him seven days time on Jan. 18 after he was abducted and arrested on false charges of carrying a “remote device” for a bomb on the afternoon of Jan. 15 while he was going to church. The police claimed he was going in a yellow cab to deliver the bomb’s remote control to someone in the Rose and Jasmine garden near Aapbara, a charge dismissed by the acting Indian High Commissioner, Mr. Sudhir Vyas, who was summoned to the foreign Ministry on an. 18. Police said, Mr. Moses was to have delivered the device to a person to be exploded ate the crowded market of Rawalpindi, Raja bazar, on Jan. 26. Later a confession was extracted from Mr. Moses under pressure and he was shown on TV with a bruised cheek and forced to sign some papers written in Urdu, a language Moses could neither read nor write. The Indian High Commission alleged he was mentally tortured. In new Delhi, the Foreign Ministry condemned the abhorrent behaviour of the Pakistani authorities in extracting so-called confessions “under duress” from Mr. Moses threatening his personal safety and that of his wife and family and subjecting him to physical and mental ill-treatment and parading him in front of the media. India told Pakistan these actions were contrary to all norms and conventions of diplomatic interaction, especially those contained in the Vienna convention on diplomatic relations and the bilateral code of conduct between India and Pakistan on the treatment of diplomatic and consular personnel.
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