Qaumi Watan Party (QWP) has asked Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif to apologise for the crackdown launched against Pakhtuns by his government and announced launching a protest campaign from Saturday (March 5) if the ethnic-based operation is not stopped forthwith.
This was announced by QWP female MPA Meraj Humayun Khan while speaking at a press conference at Peshawar Press Club on Thursday. Flanked by former MPA Nasreen Khattak, she said that her party had timely raised the issue in order to get the attention of federal government but Nawaz Sharif failed to take any notice of this alarming situation as the crackdown is still going on.
Ms Meraj Humayun said that the terrorists so far arrested in Punjab did not have a single Pakhtun among them. During the crackdown in Punjab innocent people, mostly poor labourers, were rounded up and harassed in order to make them leave the province on permanent basis.
Besides, she pointed out that some people are distributing pamphlets, handbills in Punjab against Pakhtuns but the provincial government had turned a blind eye towards them and no one has been arrested so far in this regard. "We are Pakistanis and have the right to go anywhere in the country and if the ongoing anti-Pakhtun campaign is not stopped forthwith, nobody will be able to control the fast spreading hatred," she feared.
The QWP leader said that it was national duty of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and Shahbaz Sharif to seek apology over their failure to stop the distribution of derogatory stuff in public and remove the baseless impression about Pakhtuns. She said that all the citizens had equal rights and there were no restrictions on their movement, saying that if such acts continued any longer the people belonging to various provinces would be unable to meet each others. QWP, she said was also very much concerned over the growing differences between Kabul and Islamabad and always urged them to remove the trust deficit and extend co-operation to control terrorism in the region.
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