Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf chairman Imran Khan on Saturday staged an impressive protest demonstration against US strikes, threatening to block Nato supply routes if strikes continue. The call of sit-in was given by the PTI-led KP government after a US drone hit a seminary in the province's Hangu district on Thursday, killing at least six people including senior commanders of the Haqqani network.
A very large number of workers of PTI and its coalition partners - Jamaat-i-Islami, and Awami Jamhoori Ittehad - swarmed Peshawar's main Ring Road. Strict security measures were taken to avoid any untoward situation. The KP government had deployed over 500 police personnel to ensure law and order. Transporters were also directed to use alternative routes. The personnel of police and elite force were deployed in and out of the US consulate in Peshawar during the PTI 'sit-in'.
The PTI central president Javed Hashmi, vice chairman Shah Mehmood Qureshi, Central vice-senior president Azam Swati, Jehangir Tareen, Jamshed Dasti, Fauzia Kausri, beside the Chief of Awami Muslim League Sheikh Rasheed Ahmad and Jamaat-i-Islami Central General Secretary Liaqat Bolach spearheaded the 'sit-in'. The protesters had reached the venue the Ring Road in buses, Suzuki, and motorbike, from Peshawar, far-flung areas of KP and Lahore, Rawalpindi and Islamabad as well. PTI chief reiterated his party's stance that its protest movement would continue till cessation of US drone strikes, even at the cost of losing rule in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP). He said "KP government is not going to become a political martyr, but it will be 'Ghazi' warrior."
PTI Vice-Chairman Shah Mehmood Qureshi said: "Now even the UN secretary general says that they [drone strikes] are in violation of international laws. They call it war crimes." He accused the United States of sabotaging the peace-dialogue. JI central general secretary, Liaqat Baloch said that after the closure of Nato supplies, now Afghan people had the right on its logistic equipment. He informed that JI workers will take to the streets against US drone strikes and Nato supplies in KP, Lahore, and Karachi.
Awami Muslim League (AML) President and MNA Sheikh Rasheed said: "We are being killed by dengue, hepatitis, tuberculosis, electricity, gas, inflation as well as drones." He alleged that Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was following an agenda of unleashing violence across Pakistan.
Imran also addressed Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and said that the PTI accepted the elections and accepted Nawaz as the prime minister of the country. "We supported you, we stood by you. We hoped you would start the peace dialogue soon... We hoped that when you would go the US and meet President Obama, you will at least ask him to stop the drone strikes. But when you talked over there, you did not mention the drones at all. "You have no idea about the devastation in K-P caused by this war," he said.
AFP adds: The activists burned US flags as a mark of protest, said an AFP reporter at the scene in Peshawar, where the rally took place. A senior police official in Peshawar told AFP that some 15,000 activists participated. Khan called for a complete blockade of Nato convoys to Afghanistan to put pressure on the US to abandon its drone programme. "We will not allow Nato supplies to pass from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and in any case will stop drone strikes," Khan told the gathering.
Nato supplies were suspended Saturday because of the rally, which was held on same route used by Nato trucks. A local government official said that it would not have a major effect on supplies as they were typically fewer at the weekend. Khan earlier set a November 20 deadline for the halting of drone strikes and threatened to block Nato convoys in north-western Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, where PTI leads the coalition government. But on Saturday he said he would take the issue to the country's top court and, if necessary, to the international court of justice.