ISLAMABAD: The Ministry of Interior asked Cynthia D. Ritchie on Wednesday to leave Pakistan within 15 days after rejecting her application for visa extension to prolong her presence in the country.
According to official records, Ritchie, an American blogger, was on an "extended" visa in Pakistan and was working on various film projects with the military’s public relations wing, ISPR, and the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa administration.
She was taken to the Islamabad High Court by a Pakistan People’s Party activist after she posted libelous tweets about the country’s former prime minister, Benazir Bhutto, who was killed in a gun-and-bomb attack in December 2007.
Ritchie, who lived on and off in Pakistan for over ten years, accused another PPP politician, Senator Rehman Malik, of raping her while he was the country’s interior minister in 2011.
She also maintained that two other senior politicians from the same political party behaved inappropriately with her on several different occasions.
Later, Malik’s spokesperson described Ritchie’s accusations as “false, frivolous and baseless,” and the Senator served her a Rs500 million defamation notice for making false allegations.
As the Islamabad High Court started entertaining the petition filed by the PPP activist seeking Ritchie’s deportation in June, it inquired about the terms and conditions of her visa and asked the interior ministry if the US blogger also had the right to make political statements during her stay in Pakistan.
The ministry’s decision not to extend her visa was taken in continuation to the high court proceedings.
Responding to the development, the US blogger said it was the first time in more than 10 years that Pakistan had rejected her visa application. She also expressed her intention to appeal the decision.
Ritchie added that she would continue to challenge the “hypocrisy of liberals” and express her love for Pakistan and its people regardless of wherever she was.
