Daily Times

KARACHI: Senior politician, human rights lawyer and chairman of Awami Tahreek Pakistan (ATP) Rasool Bux Palijo was laid to rest at a graveyard in Munger Khan Palijo, Jungshahi on Friday.

Thousands of people including political activists, writers, lawyers and educationists attended the funeral prayers. They paid a tribute to late Palijo for his services in the field of literature and politics.

Hundreds of women also participated in his funeral. After the funeral prayers, women took Palijo’s body to the graveyard.

Palijo passed away after a protracted illness this Thursday, at Karachi’s South City Hospital in Clifton.

SANA mourns the death of Rasool Bux Palijo

Sindhi Association of North America (SANA) in a press statement issued on Friday expressed deep grief and sorrow at the demise of a great leader, a lawyer and an intellectual par excellence, Rasool Bakhsh Palijo.

“A fighter by nature”, the statement noted, “Palijo never gave in to the forces of tyranny and injustice. Throughout his 89 years of life, he struggled to bring about a positive change in the lives of fellow human beings. A sage, who taught generations of Sindhis the value of freedom and meaning of patriotism, is no more with us.”

All through his life, Palijo fought politically, legally and through his pen for the marginalized people of Sindh. Sindhi nation cannot forget the role Palijo played in the movement for restoration of democracy (MRD) during Zia’s regime.

As a result of his participation in the MRD, Palijo was incarcerated for eleven years by the martial law regime. Amnesty International declared him a “Prisoner of Conscience”.

A voracious reader and a keen student of politics, he introduced the same kind of romanticism and idealism to Pakistani politics as espoused by Nelson Mandela, Mao Zedong, and other great revolutionaries. With Palijo’s death, the nation, especially Sindh, has become poorer.

Published in Daily Times, June 9^th 2018.