LAHORE - Pakistan Awami Tehreek yesterday announced to launch country-wide campaign from August 6 to get ‘an eye for an eye’ justice for its activists killed in the Model Town incident.
PAT chief Dr Tahirul Qadri made this announcement after the conclusion of a national consultative meeting of multi-party opposition groups at his party’s central secretariat in connection with efforts for a joint drive against the government.
However, the multi-party opposition conference could not decide a joint move against the government, and constituted a joint action committee only to ponder upon a unified action against the ruling coalition.
Awami Muslim League head Sheikh Rasheed Ahmed would lead the committee which is expected to put the opposition parties on the road of a joint move against the government.
Surprisingly, Sheikh Rasheed had said a few days ago that he would propose to the parliamentary opposition parties in the moot to resign from the assemblies to launch an effective movement against the government, but he didn’t table any such suggestion at yesterday’s meeting.
“The PAT will launch the first phase of its country-wide campaign to get justice for the victims of the Model Town incident on August 6 under the title of Qisas Movement, ‘an eye for an eye’ justice,” said Qadri, briefing the media after the national consultative multi-party opposition moot.
“The first phase will start from August 6 and conclude on August 27. The August 6 plan will cover the cities of Karachi, Lahore, Chiniot, Gujranwala, Faisalabad, Ghotki and Islamabad by staging protest rallies and sit-ins,” he added.
On August 16, similar protests will be held in the cities of DG Khan, Sialkot, Larkana, Sargodha, Rawalpindi, Faisalabad, Karachi and Lahore. On August 20, the cities of Hyderabad, Okara, Bahawalpur, Jhelum, Gujranwala, Chiniot and TT Singh will be covered.
In the last leg on August 27, Karachi, Lahore, Islamabad, Peshawar, Abbottabad, Bhakkar, Faisalabad and Gujrat will be covered, said the PAT chairman, while giving the schedule of Qisas Movement.
Islamabad and Karachi are included in most of the schedules to get maximum media publicity as the federal and two provincial capitals are media hubs, a PAT leader told The Nation when asked why the three cities were included in most of the protest schedules.
No city of Balochistan is included in the protest drive because of absence of PAT in the province, added the PAT leader.
Qadri said the second and third phase of his party’s movement would be announced with the consultation of the joint action committee.
The multi-party opposition moot, agreeing to an eight-point joint communiqué, constituted a joint action committee to launch a joint move against the government over the issues of the Panama leaks investigations, loadshedding, law and order and terrorism.
Through the first communiqué, the participants agreed to the PAT’s Qisas demand for the victims of the Model Town tragedy. The participants demanded publication of judicial commission report on the Model Town carnage and backed PAT’s announcement to launch Qisas Movement.
In the second communiqué, the participants demanded accountability of the prime minister and his family members under the ToRs sought by the parliamentary opposition parties.
Through another communiqué, the multi-party opposition moot condemned the unprecedented loadshedding and poor law and order situation.
The participants, through another communiqué, demanded a full-fledged operation in the Punjab to purge the province of criminal gangs and terrorists and their facilitators. They also congratulated the armed forces for successes in the operation Zarb-e-Azb.
Another communiqué condemned the Indian forces’ genocide campaign in Held Kashmir and urged the government to launch an aggressive diplomatic offensive to force New Delhi to implement the UN resolutions on Kashmir.
A communiqué condemned the target killings in the country on ethnic, sectarian and religious grounds.
Yet another communiqué demanded of the government to address the reservations of smaller provinces with regard to CPEC. The last communiqué demanded the rulers stop anti-farmers policies.
Sardar Latif Khosa and Mian Manzoor Ahmed Wattoo of PPP, PTI’s Mian Mehmoodur Rashid, Raja Basharat and Kamil Ali Agha of PML-Q, Majlis-e-Wahdatul Muslimeen’s Nasir Sheerazi, Pak Sarzameen Party’s Raza Haroon, Sheikh Rasheed Ahmedd of Awami Muslim League, Sahibzada Hamid Raza of Sunni Ittehad Council and prominent leaders of JUP (Markazi) as well as JUP (Niazi) participated in the moot. No prominent leader of ANP and MQM participated in the moot.