Pakistan's human rights minister Shireen Mazari has alleged that the Boris Johnson government of the United Kingdom is discriminating against Pakistan as it has a strong Indophiles presence.
Mazari's allegations come after the United Kingdom on August 8 relaxed travel restrictions for India by transferring the nation from its "red" to "amber" list, which means fully-vaccinated Indian travellers would no longer be subjected to a mandatory 10-day hotel quarantine upon arrival in Britain. However, this exemption was not given to Pakistan.
The issue of the United Kingdom allowing flights from India while prohibiting flights from Pakistan has snowballed into a larger India-Pakistan issue, as Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan's special assistant Dr Faisal Sultan has written to UK health secretary Sajid Javid comparing Pakistan's Covid situation with that of other countries, including India.
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Dr Faisal emphasized in his tweet that Pakistan has no interest in letting its people who represent a health danger to other societies to travel overseas, just as it has no interest in permitting possible risks to public health to enter its territory.
Dr. Faisal stated that while comparing Pakistan's Covid status to that of India, Iran, and Iraq, Pakistan had the lowest daily cases per million people (21.18) in the area. In his remarks, he stated that India had 28.84 daily instances per million people, whereas Iran and Iraq have 421.98 and 276.19, respectively.
The UK government has already explained why Pakistan was kept on the red list. It said that that in case of Pakistan, the combination of a deteriorating epidemiological situation, combined with low testing rates and limited genomic surveillance, presents a high risk that an outbreak of a new variant, or existing VoC, will not be identified before it is imported to the UK." It further stated that the present course of the epidemic in Pakistan is of special concern. In Pakistan, the number of cases has grown by 87% in the last seven days compared to the prior week.
Until the first week of August, both India and Pakistan were on the United Kingdom's red list, which meant that no travellers from these two nations were permitted to enter the country. Following the second wave of the epidemic, the limitations were enforced. India was transferred to the amber list on August 8, enabling Indian passengers to enter the United Kingdom.
Passengers from nations on the amber list of the UK's traffic light system must take a COVID-19 test three days before departure and arrange in advance for two COVID-19 tests to be conducted upon arrival in England, as well as complete a passenger locating form on arrival, according to the legal regulations.
India has been on the Red list since late April, when the Delta variety was at its peak, resulting in an effective restriction on travel save for returning British citizens, who had to self-isolate in a government-approved hotel at a significant additional cost.
