KHOKHARABAD, Pakistan, AUG. 31, 2010 (Zenit.org).- A Pakistani politician ordered the diversion of flood waters into a Christian village, killing at least 15, in an attempt to save his personal property.
Fides reported today that the Christian village of Khokharabad was completely flooded, causing damage to crops and leaving 377 homeless.
Jamshed Dasti, a local politician of Muzaffargarh, near the Christian village, ordered the building of a dam to divert the flood water from a heavy monsoon rainfall through the village to save some of his own possessions.
Fides noted that the Khokharabad inhabitants were not notified and therefore were unable to escape before their village was wiped out.
One of the village leaders, Taj Masih, protested: “It is an inhumane act.
“Our village was flooded on purpose. Dasti, just to save his own land preferred to leave 377 people without home or harvest, our only source of livelihood.
“Now we have nothing.”
The local authorities are denying responsibility for the decision to erect the dam.
Execution
Monday, Fides reported that three aid workers, who were trying to bring emergency assistance to the 800,000 displaced flood victims, were killed.
The three volunteers, working in one of the 1,500 foreign aid NGOs presently active in that country, were murdered by Islamic fundamentalists sometime between Aug. 24 and Aug. 25 in the Swat Valley.
The workers were identified as being American citizens, though their names and group they were associated with have not yet been publicized.
Maurizio Giuliano, a U.N. spokesman working in the Pakistan office, told Fides that “research is underway. For now we can neither confirm nor deny this news. We continue to work to save millions of people.”
Sources who requested anonymity told Fides that the “brutal execution of three volunteers” was most likely carried out by local jihadist groups linked to the network of “Tehreek-e-Shariat-e-Nafaz-e-Mohammadi,” a “Pakistani militant organization with Wahhabiti ties, declared a terrorist group and outlawed by the government in 2002.”
