Daily Times

Islamabad/Karachi: Scores of residents of Zhob district of Balochistan participated in a sit-in during Eid holidays to protest the continued detention of 37 activists and supporters of the Pashtun Tahaffuz Movement (PTM) in Adiala Jail.

The sit-in was called after an anti-terrorism court in Islamabad refused request for release of the 37 personnel on bail following talks between PTM leaders and a government-backed jirga. The former had agreed to call off their jalsa in Ramzak on the third holiday of Eid after the jirga assured that the 37 men would be released before Eid. The promise remained unfulfilled.

Speakers at the sit-in on the third day on Monday lamented that those those responsible for militancy and extrajudicial killings were getting special treatment while peaceful protesters were incarcerated.

The three-day protest drew several activists of political parties, writers, intellectuals and students in attendance. Zhob is the hometown of several of the incarcerated men in Adiala.

Addressing the gathering, Khan Zaman Kakar, a PTM leader who is enrolled in a PhD programme at Islamabad’s Quaid-e-Azam University, said, “We’re happy that our comrades are behind bars not for committing a crime but for practicing the philosophy of non-violence taught by Bacha Khan Baba.”

Meanwhile, relatives of Sindhi and Baloch missing persons also held demonstrations in Karachi and Quetta on Eid to protest the continued disappearance of their loves ones and to urge the authorities concerned to ensure their safe return.

Speakers at the protest camp in Karachi said that around 160 persons, including 60 political workers and Sindhi nationalists, were picked up from their homes by plainclothes men.

“This is my second Eid spent in protest for the recovery of my relatives,” said Sasui Lohar, daughter of Hidayatullah Lohar who is reportedly missing.

Journalist Inam Abbasi, who was picked up from Karachi in 2017, reportedly returned home during the Eid break.

Published in Daily Times, June 19^th 2018.