Two months after the December 2008 shut down of a Pakistani charity, the fate of people served by hospitals, schools and refugee camps in areas hard hit by an October 2008 earthquake is uncertain.
On Dec. 12, 2008, a day after the United Nations listed the charity Jamat-ud-Dawa (JuD) as a front for Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT), the group believed responsible for the Nov. 26 attacks in Mumbai, the Pakistani government moved to shut down the charity. Assets of the group were frozen, leaders were jailed and several of the charity’s offices and medical centers were seen with locks on their doors.
On Jan. 16 Pakistani Interior Minister Rehman Malik told the press that the charity’s offices, 94 schools, two libraries and six websites were targeted for closure by the government. The government has also ordered banks to freeze assets of the charity.
As one of the main providers of relief aid in the Kashmir region, JuD had been delivering humanitarian and medical services to thousands without food, water and shelter after the October 2008 earthquake devastated the region. “People are suffering because of the ban on Jamaat-ud-Dawa,” Abdul Basir, mayor of a town devastated by the quake told Agence France-Presse. “Thousands of quake victims were being fed at the Jamaat relief camp twice a day, and now it is closed,” he added.
Responding to reporters’ questions on Jan. 31 about the status of JuD medical facilities, Chief Minister Mian Shahbaz Sharif said, “charity schools and hospitals will not be closed down as these are rendering humanitarian services to the destitute.”
The charity had planned on building 600 new homes in the area damaged by the quake, but has suspended the construction. “The work was half finished, it is totally stopped now, and people are shivering in the extreme cold,” Basir said.
The head of JuD, Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, was reported to be under house arrest. He has denied the charity’s involvement in the attacks. In response Saeed’s arrest, a spokesman for JuD has said they, “are preparing an appeal in the Lahore High Court against the detention” of Saeed and that “JuD has no has no relations with al-Qaeda or the Taliban.”
This is not the first time JuD has been accused of ties terrorist organizations. In 2001, former Prime Minister Perez Musharraf banned the JuD after the attacks on the Indian Parliament. The charity challenged the ban in the High Court and was eventually acquitted.