Daily Times

LAHORE: “We are here to raise voice against the military farms administration of Okara. They have taken away our land without paying a compensation amount,” said two aged women who came from Okara to attend the Pashtun Tahaffuz Movement’s Lahore rally.

Speaking to Daily Times, they said, “We are told not to talk about our suffering because people who try to resist are picked up. We have faith in Manzoor Pashteen because he is saying all the right things. We support this movement because we want to see an end to maltreatment of civilians,” they said.

Many people in attendance at the rally were of the opinion that the state authorities had adopted a discriminatory policy towards the people of Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). They said the PTM was putting up peaceful resistance against oppression.

Waqas, a teacher at a college in Lahore, said, “Pashtuns are our brothers and if they feel they are being mistreated, we should listen to them. Punjabis and Lahoris should do whatever they can to support our Pashtun brethren who have long been on the receiving end of violence and indifference.”

A PTM activist who studies at Punjab University told Daily Times that he supported the movement because Pashtun students studying in Lahore, Karachi and Islamabad were tired of facing discrimination based on their ethnic identity. He said the state should come out of the denial mode and accept that this movement could no longer be suppressed through force.

A tribal elder from Waziristan told Daily Times that some check posts were removed after the recent public meetings of PTM where the issue of humiliation of the public at the hands of security personnel was raised. “Our people are degraded and disrespected in the name of checking.” A large number of activists from Punjab including Hina Jilani, Amna Masud Janjua and Farzana Bari were in attendance. Others included Salima Hashmi, the daughter of Faiz Ahmed Faiz; Imtiaz Alam, the head of SAFMA, and Prof Azizuddin, a veteran columnist and writer. Several members of the Women Actionn Forum including Nighat Saeed Khan

Lahore-based activist Sarah Suhail said the basic rights of people of FATA had long been violated, adding that their houses and businesses were destroyed.

“Now if they have finally started raising their voice against the injustice, every Pakistani has the duty to support them. The government should listen to their tragic stories and find a way to compensate for the pain and discrimination that they went through over the years,” she told Daily Times.

Singer and activist Taimur Rehman and Tahira Jalib, daughter of Habib Jalib, sang revolutionary songs based on the poetry of Jalib and Faiz.

Speaking to Daily Times, Rehman said, “the government arrested the organisers of the rally but it had to release them after a protest on social media and opposition from people within the ruling party including Maryam Nawaz. Peaceful protest is a democratic right of all citizens and the government should engage with the aggrieved Pashtuns instead of using force against them.”

He said media have been denied access to FATA, “but we have heard stories of mistreatment of the people in FATA at the hands of security forces. The state should listen to their grievances instead of declaring them traitors.”

Several women participants of the rally were of the opinion that they felt safer compared to other political rallies they attended. Sabahat Zakariya and Maria Arshad, two women in attendance, shared their position experience after the rally through their social media profiles.

Saima, a law student, told Daily Times that PTM’s rally was the first political gathering she had attended in her life because she felt that the Pashtun community had genuine grievances that need to be addressed.

Regarding his and others detention on Saturday, PTM leader Ali Wazir told Daily Times that the police officials accused them of being involved in conspiracy against Punjab. “We told them that protest is our democratic right, but they kept calling us enemies of the country.”

Published in Daily Times, April 23^rd 2018.