Mazari reaches out to UN over blasphemy cases against Imran, others.

ISLAMABAD -- A member of the PTI Core Committee and former human rights minister Shireen Mazari has written letters to the United Nations (UN) officials and high commissioner for human rights, informing them about the alleged press censorship in Pakistan and filing of politically motivated blasphemy cases against chairman Imran Khan and other PTI leaders.

Through the letters, copies of which are available with Dawn, Ms Mazari urged the UN officials to 'take urgent notice of the issues raised as they not only threaten democracy in Pakistan but also the lives of former prime minister Imran Khan and his party's senior leadership as well as his party members and intervene on these issues with the Pakistan government'.

She has sent the letters to High Commissioner for Human Rights in Switzerland Michelle Bachlet and the UN special rapporteurs on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression, freedom of religion or belief and extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions in pursuant to various resolutions adopted by the Human Rights Council.

'Pakistan has been engulfed in a political crisis in the aftermath of a regime change scheme to remove the government of PM Imran Khan and replace it with a combined opposition government led by a politician who is involved in multiple money laundering cases and is out on bail,' Ms Mazari said in her letters.

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Mentioning the controversial diplomatic cable sent to the previous PTI government by Pakistan's former ambassador in Washington, she wrote that 'there had been a US-backed regime change conspiracy assisted by the establishment and the opposition parties'.

She also complained about the judiciary's role in the ouster of the PTI government through a successful vote of no-confidence (VNC) resolution.

'When the deputy speaker chairing the NA session stated he rejected the VNC until such time as an investigation was done into the cipher and who all were possibly involved in the conspiracy, the Supreme Court of Pakistan intervened and, against all norms of parliamentary supremacy, gave an order on which date and what time the speaker must call the NA session for the vote. Things descended into utter chaos but eventually the vote was held and the Khan-led government voted out,' read the letter.

Since then, she wrote, there...