A day after media reports claimed that Senate Deputy Chairman the Secretary General of Jamiat Ulema Islam Fazl Maulana Abdul Ghafoor Haideri was denied visa to visit New York, another Pakistani lawmaker Hafiz Hamdullah on February 13 said that his US Visa application was too turned down and that without a valid reason.
This has led to the cancellation of a two-member delegation’s planned visit to New York for the Inter-Parliamentary Union at the United Nations headquarters being held on February 13 and 14.
“I was not given any reasons. After a four-hour wait, I was simply informed by the visa office that my application could not be entertained,” a leading daily from Pakistan, The Express Tribune quoted Hamdullah as saying.
Earlier, on November 8, 2016, Senate Deputy Chairman and Secretary General of Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam Fazl (JUI-F) Maulana Abdul Ghafoor Haideri was also denied a US visa.
Interestingly, Haideri and Hamdullah belong to the same JUI-F party, who is headed by Maulana Fazlur Rehman.
According to the reports JUI-F, a coalition partner of the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz party, is known to be inclined towards Taliban and critical of US policies in the region, and this might be a reason behind declining the visas to them.
Earlier, US president Donald Trump signed an executive order in January barring citizens from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen for 90 days, fulfilling one of his campaign promises. However, Pakistan is not in the list on banned nations.
