Naz Shah, a British Labour MP, wrote a letter to UK foreign Secretary Dominic Raab and sought an explanation for putting Pakistan into the list of travel ban countries. She also called the move “consciously and knowingly discriminatory.”

According to Dawn, she also made a comparison with some other countries, including India, that have not been added to the list despite having much higher active cases in comparison to Pakistan. The UK variant, she claimed, is not a concern in Pakistan. 

She said the decision to add Pakistan to the ‘red list’ led her to conclude that the government did not have a coherent strategy to deal with the list and that it was applying its decisions by “politics not data”.

“It is knowingly and consciously discriminating against Pakistan and the Pakistani diaspora community,” Shah, of Pakistani origin, wrote in the letter, seeking clarification from Raab.

Earlier, Asad Omar, Pakistan’s federal minister for planning, also raised questioned about the basis for banning Pakistan. 

Taking to Twitter, Omar said, “Every country has a right to take decisions to safeguard the health of their citizens. However, the recent decision by the UK govt to add some countries including Pakistan on the red list  raises a legitimate question of whether the choice of countries is based on science or foreign policy.”