ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) leader and chairman Senate Standing Committee on Interior, A Rehman Malik Friday participated in the sit-in protest against the Machh tragedy in Islamabad, and once again urged Prime Minister Imran Khan to give up ego and visit the protesting Hazara community waiting and demanding his visit.

He said the tragedy of Machh, wherein, 11 miners of the Hazara community had been killed mercilessly had hurt every Pakistani.

He said Machh tragedy was a highly barbaric act of terrorism that had shaken the entire nation.

He said, “I have come to express my heartfelt condolence and solidarity with the families of the martyrs of Hazara community”.

The PPP leader said thousands of men, women, and children were protesting along with coffins of their loved ones in extremely harsh weather of minus 8 degrees Celsius in Quetta demanding the visit of the prime minister.

Senator A Rehman Malik said he was the first one who pointed out the presence of Daesh in Pakistan years back, but successive governments had been refusing to accept its presence just as a policy.

Malik said he had always been advocating that rather than remaining in the state of denial, we should accept that Daesh was very much present in Pakistan.

He said that Daesh handlers recruited over 80,000 Pakistanis mostly from south Punjab, and the recent ouster of Pakistani Daesh operators from Syria would be a great threat to the country.

He said that without wasting any time, he flew in C-130 to Iran and met the Iranian president, supreme leader, foreign minister, and also his counterpart, and sought their help to convince Shia clerics in Pakistan to bury the dead bodies, adding, resultantly the dead bodies were buried after fulfilling their demands.

He said the present government should assess the sensitivity of the matter and situation and resolve it immediately.

He urged the prime minister to visit Quetta with senior members of his cabinet as the families of the martyrs were looking at him for assurance of their life protection.

He also demanded the government to announce the constitution of a judicial commission with its members from each provincial high court to probe into the Machh tragedy to fix the responsibilities that such tragedy could be prevented in the future.

He said that it was a serious issue and there should be no politics over human tragedies and sufferings. He said that the prime minister was the prime minister of every community in Pakistan.

The PPP leader said that the foreign forces were trying to cause Shia-Sunni riots in Pakistan but both the sects knew well that it was the enemies’ conspiracy.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2021