PAK Senate Committee Resolution
The Senate Standing Committee on Interior urges the Government of Pakistan to ensure the prompt repatriation of Dr. Aafia Siddiqui, a Pakistani Citizen, from the Government of the United States of America (USA) where she is being detained and tried on the basis of questionable facts and unfounded charges.
The Committee takes serious note of the demeaning treatment and traumatic conditions being suffered by Dr. Siddiqui and the intense psychological and emotional agony of her family.
In affirming the international human rights standards in general and those of the Convention on the Rights of the Child in particular, the committee is deeply concerned about the plight of Dr. Siddiqui’s three dependent children, two of whom are still missing since March 2003 when Dr. Siddiqui and her children were illegally taken away from Pakistan.
The Committee, acknowledging the deep concern of the Pakistani people, also calls upon International Human Rights Organizations and the Secretary General of the United Nations (UN) to exercise their influence to help secure Dr. Siddiqui’s release and locate her two missing children and to condemn the inhumane treatment that Dr. Siddiqui has suffered and continues to suffer. These include such treatment as continued psychological manipulation, physical isolation and the degrading strip searches that Dr. Siddiqui is routinely subjected to, denying her basic human dignity during her prolonged detention and mental distress.
The Senate Standing Committee on Interior, therefore, expresses its deep and serious concern for the maligning of Pakistani citizens with terrorism related activities and the use of such allegations for the abduction, treatment and detainment of Pakistani Citizens without the protections of International law, international instruments on human rights or the rights guaranteed by most civilised nations.
The Senate Committee urges the Government of Pakistan to undertake the following actions immediately and with full force and sincere vigor:
- Apply highest priority diplomatic and other efforts to ensure the prompt release of and honourable return of Dr. Siddiqui to her homeland of Pakistan.
- Approach the Government of the United States of America (USA) to provide treatment to Dr. Siddiqui strictly in accordance with international human rights conventions and rights guaranteed by the Constitution of the USA, many of which she has been denied.
- Work in liaison with the United Nations (UN), international human rights organizations and NGOs to exert their full influence to mitigate the sufferings and bring a humanitarian conclusion to this tragedy by reuniting Dr. Siddiqui with her family and children.
- Continue efforts to trace and recover the two missing children of Dr. Siddiqui and ensure their safe re-union with their mother and family.
- Share the grief of the family of Dr. Siddiqui and to commit itself to continue its efforts, in all forms and at all relevant for a public and private, until the sufferings of Dr. Siddiqui and the family come to an end.
- Condemn the humiliating strip searches that Dr Siddiqui is subjected to and demand that the same must stop forthwith.
- Demand that Dr. Siddiqui has access to family and people she trusts without being subjected to strip searches.
Considering the highly emotional involvement of the people of Pakistan in this case, and the treatment meted out to a young mother with young children, two of whom are still missing, the Government of Pakistan and the Senate Standing Committee on Interior showed emphasize the importance of the case and the goodwill that the release of Dr. Aafia Siddqui will bring to the American Government amongst the people of Pakistan.
