Our Correspondent
Quetta
In a show of solidarity with the families of Hazara victims, Pakistan People’s Party Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari and Pakistan Muslim League-N Vice-President Maryam Nawaz reached Quetta on Thursday.
Earlier in the day, Majlis Wahdat-e-Muslimeen leader Allama Syed Hashim Moosvi categorically denied that an agreement had been reached between the Hazara community and the government as their sit-in entered the fifth day refusing to bury the bodies of the 11 colliers brutally killed in Machh. Speaking to the media in Quetta, the MWM leader clarified that no agreement had been reached with the government and stated that they will continue to protest till their demands were met. Sit-ins continued across the country with major arteries of cites blocked for protests. A number of roads were blocked across Karachi causing major traffic jams in the metropolis.
Addressing the Quetta sit-in, Bilawal stated that the price of everything in this country have skyrocketed, but the blood of its labourers, its lawyers remained cheap.
“Unfortunately, we come from a country where even the dead have to be dragged into politics,” he said. The PPP chairman said he could not gather words to console with the Hazara community.
“You have staged protests previously, and are out on the street again today, with just one demand… the right to life!” the PPP chairman added. Bilawal said he came from a family of martyrs, yet his family too has been unable to provide justice to its own martyrs. However, he added that “I promise you that till I am alive, till I am politically active we will only demand that the poor of this country be allowed to live peacefully”.
The PPP scion stated that, “We call on this state that the most patriotic people in this country are sitting in front of you, if you can’t provide justice to them who you can provide justice? “We want to remind you [the state] that you promised the APS kids that you will end terrorism, but you could not. You promised the implementation of the National Action Plan, but you have failed at that too,” he stated.
I am not asking you to provide justice to Benazir Bhutto or Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, I am only asking you to provide justice to the labourers.
Maryam Nawaz criticised Prime Minister Imran Khan for not coming to Machh to condole the killings of the 11 Hazara miners. “Doesn’t your shamelessness have any bounds?” the PML-N leader asked PM Imran while addressing the Hazara community. “All they are asking is that you come here and condole with the family members and pray for the departed souls. Is your ego bigger than those whose coffins are laying here,” she stated.
Condoling with the family members for the slain coal mine workers on behalf of former prime minister Nawaz Sharif and the entire PML-N , Maryam said that she cannot even begin to imagine what the family members of the victims must be going through.
