- Friday, April 19, 2024
By: Shubham Ghosh
PAKISTAN, which saw two major Test-playing nations pulling out of scheduled tours on its soil in a gap of just a few days, has now accused arch-rivals India of sending a threatening email to the New Zealand cricket squad prompting them to call off the tour just minutes before the start of the first one-day international in Peshawar last Friday (17) citing credible security concerns.
On Monday (20), England followed suit by cancelling tours of both their men’s and women’s teams in Pakistan scheduled next month.
Pakistan has been claiming that India was behind some of the terror attacks that took place on its soil recently.
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India’s ministry of external affairs (MEA) has asked Islamabad in the past to take “credible and verifiable” action against terrorism emanating from its own soil, instead of blaming others.
“It is not new for Pakistan to engage in baseless propaganda against India. Pakistan would do well to expend the same effort in setting its own house in order and taking credible and verifiable action against terrorism emanating from its soil and terrorists who have found safe sanctuaries there,” MEA spokesperson Arindam Bagchi said in July.
After New Zealand, England pull out of twin tours of Pakistan
“The international community is well aware of Pakistan’s credentials when it comes to terrorism. This is acknowledged by none other than its own leadership, which continues to glorify terrorists like Osama Bin Laden as ‘martyrs’,” he said.
Relations between India and Pakistan have seen rocky moments ever since the Taliban have returned to power in Afghanistan. While Islamabad has backed the extremist group’s revival, New Delhi has expressed concern that Afghanistan’s soil would now be used by the anti-India terror groups based in Pakistan against it.
On Wednesday (22), Pakistan’s information minister Fawad Chaudhry claimed at a press conference in Islamabad that a fake post was created last month under Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan militant Ehsanullah Ehsan’s name which asked the New Zealand cricket board and government not to send the national team to Pakistan threatening that it would be “targeted”.
However, on the day of the first match, New Zealand officials told the hosts that their government had concerns over a credible threat and they called off the tour, Chaudhry, who was accompanied by interior minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed, said.
“Pakistan Cricket Board officials, the interior ministry security team, everyone went to them and asked them to share the threat … [but] they were as clueless as us,” he was quoted as saying by a Pakistani news outlet.
He added that a day later, a second threatening email was sent to the New Zealand team using the ID, Hamza Afridi.
He claimed that investigating authorities discovered that the email was sent from a device associated with India.
“It was sent using a virtual private network (VPN) so the location was shown as Singapore,” he said, adding that the same device had 13 other IDs, nearly all of which were Indian names.
“The device used to send the threat to the New Zealand team belonged to India. A fake ID was used but it was sent from Maharashtra,” he said.
Chaudhry said the interior ministry had registered a case and had requested Interpol for assistance and information on the Tehreek-i-Labbaik ProtonMail and the ID of Hamza Afridi.
He said a threat has also been issued to the West Indies team which is due to travel to Pakistan in December. “A threat has already been issued to the team,” he claimed, adding that this was also issued via a ProtonMail account.
“This is unfortunate. We believe this is a campaign against international cricket. The International Cricket Council (ICC) and other bodies must take notice,” he said. On Tuesday (21), Chaudhry claimed that Pakistan was paying a price for saying no to the US on allowing American military bases on its soil.
Commenting on England’s decision to cancel their tour, Chaudhry said that British High Commissioner Christian Turner had made it clear that the UK government’s advisory for Pakistan was not being changed.
“So if the government has no reservations, who is the English Cricket Board [to cancel the tour]? To claim that players are tired is a shoddy excuse,” he said.
He said Pakistan Cricket Board chairman Rameez Raja, foreign ministry and Interior ministry would take up the issue at all concerned forums and Pakistan Television would evaluate the financial losses.
