ISLAMABAD: Expressing concern over continuous human rights violations, torture and abduction of party workers especially women and children, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) on Tuesday called upon the newly appointed Chief Justice of Pakistan to take notice of extrajudicial abductions and enforced disappearances by military agencies.
Speaking at a presser along with wife of ex-MNA Chaudhry Ijaz, PTI secretary general Salman Akram Raja, the opposition leader in National Assembly Omar Ayub, Asad Qaiser and others, called upon the top judge to put an end to the lawlessness in the country as there is no let-up in abduction of PTI leaders and workers by the “sleuths.”
Narrating the ordeal, she and her children have been facing along with death threats from unidentified men, the wife of ex-MNA Chaudhry Ijaz said that neither the police nor anyone else is ready to rein in the unidentified men who have constantly been torturing her and her family.
“The police plainly refuse to take any action, saying they could not do anything. They threatened me of registering an FIR under Anti-Terrorism Act if I did not stop pressing the matter…this is what the police say when we ask them to give us protection and register FIR against the unidentified men who certainly belong to spy agencies,” she lamented.
A visibly perturbed Salman Akram Raja, who is also one of the country’s top lawyers, apologised to the wife of Ijaz, saying “I’m ashamed to hear the way you’ve been treated, but we’ll fight and defeat the elements no matter how powerful they are.”
He said that “if Genghis Khan had been alive, he would have been ashamed of what’s being done to PTI leadership.”
He called upon the masses not to give up and continue fighting, saying the days of those who think this country belongs to them only are living in a fool’s paradise as the true rulers of the country are the masses and a handful elite and its cronies.
“We’ll not sit idle. We’ll take to the streets and fight against this barbarism and high-handedness […] whatever is being done to us is not acceptable,” he maintained.
Asad Qaiser said that the PTI would take all opposition parties on-board and would take to the streets against state fascism, adding the constitution has been completely suspended, and a virtual martial law has been imposed in the country.
The opposition leader Omar Ayub said it point blank: the agencies are abducting people.
“I’ve been naming the agencies openly on the floor of the house, and I’m telling you now that it is the spy agencies who are abducting our people.”
Copyright Business Recorder, 2024