Pashtun Long March

[Butter Chicken]

Pashtuns will approach UN if state doesn’t give due rights, says Manzoor Pashteen

Manzoor Pashteen, leader of the Pashtun Tahafuz Movement (PTM) that has recently staged a series of protests against extrajudicial arrests and killings of members of the ethnic minority allegedly by the security forces, has said that the protesters would approach the United Nations (UN) in case the Pakistani state does not give them their due constitutional rights.

“Our next step is to mobilise as many people as possible, to unite and demand our rights under the constitution. We want to settle our demands in court so that we are assured of the agreement. “We want to end this issue within Pakistan, but if it doesn’t happen, then we will take the issue to the United Nations and appeal to the global society to stand with us in these hard times,” Pashteen said in a recent interview with Al Jazeera.

He said, “It’s a miracle that our efforts are still going on.”

The killing of an aspiring model from the community – which makes up about 15 per cent of Pakistan’s 207 million population – in January sparked countrywide protests.

On Sunday, Pashteen led another Pashtun Long March in Peshawar, demanding protection and rights.

According to the Pashtun leader, there were only 22 people with him when he started the protest in March. “But very soon, thousands joined us. We had no idea these many people would join us.,” he said, calling it a miracle.

He said that Pakistan would become stable if the law enforcement and security agencies are held accountable for their actions with checks and balances.

“Extrajudicial killings and missing persons is not unique to Pashtuns. If a commission is formed to solve these issues, it will also benefit others,” he said, adding that if the state can address the grievances of Pashtuns, who have experienced violence and injustice, and yet have protested peacefully, it will set a new precedent.

“If these injustices and mistreatment by institutions against their own people end, then the anger and resentment will also end. People will embrace Pakistan and Pakistan will embrace its people.”

Defending the protest movement, Pashteen said that their protests are constitutional.

“The people who do not want peace have no respect for the constitution, and it seems the Pakistani institutions do not want to work under the constitution,” he said. “This is a crucial matter, and we need to think about why this is happening.”

He condemned the labelling of the protesting Pashtuns as foreign agents working for Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), India’s spy agency, or the Afghan intelligence agency – National Directorate of Security.

“We are simple people talking about peace and harmony. Our agenda is peace, and if their agenda is that atrocities should continue, this is wrong. How is demanding a peaceful life part of a foreign agenda?”

The Pashtun leader said the movement will not resort to violence even though attempts were being made to sabotage its peaceful agenda.

 

[SADAKHUSH]

Moment when ISI puppet mullah tried to divert crowds attention by speaking against America instead of Pakistani establishment.crowed became furious and chanted slogans of "Yeh jo dehshadgardi hai,iske peeche wardi hai"

Pashtuns will not fall for ISPR propaganda anymore

This is called organic movement. I call upon the Pak Army Generals who are in service those who have retired to give freedom to Pashtuns and honour their demands otherwise they will take you to UN general assembly to give your establishment taste of your own medicine. Your retired Generals keep barking for the rights of Kashmiri people now it is your turn to honour the demands of Pashtuns and stop killing their children and fathers.

 

[Butter Chicken]

MQM leader in exile Altaf Hussain sympathises with Baloch,Mohajir and Pashtuns

 

[Butter Chicken]

Next march is on April 22 in Lahore,the heart of Punjabistan.Leftist parties have also extended support to PTM

 

[Butter Chicken]

Pashtuns demand freedom from corrupt,terrorist jernails

 

[Butter Chicken]

I clearly say to Chinese ambassador to stop projects in our land ! We will invite you after when we get the ownership of our land currently we are under occupation of others!
(Some background about the speaker-His brother,during the height of TTP in occupied Pakhtunistan,told the Pak Army that no TTP militant will find refuge in his village.The next day,he was shot in the middle of the market by "unidientified gunmen")

 

[Butter Chicken]

Pashtuns in Lahore rally for Mazoor Pashteen.


School children in FATA sing Pashtun nationalist song "Da Sanga Azadi Da"


Another rally in Waziristan


"Punjab bhi dega azaadi,tera baap bhi dega azaadi"

 

[AMCA]

After being unheard by authorities in Peshawar, traders from North Waziristan take their protest to Islamabad to press demands for compensation for their loses during military operations in the region. Traders say 20,000 well-stocked shops have been razed to the ground.

 

[indus]

‘Our First Mistake Will Be Our Last’: Pakistani Rights Movement Defies Army

At a Pashtun rights rally in Peshawar on April 8, the movement’s founder, Manzoor Pashteen, took the microphone to condemn the Pakistani Army as “oppressors” who kill with impunity.


By Meher Ahmad

April 17, 2018
A new civil rights movement in Pakistan is galvanizing a rapidly growing following among the country’s ethnic Pashtun minority by doing the nearly unthinkable: openly accusing the powerful and popular Pakistani military establishment of being “oppressors” who kill or whisk away Pashtuns by the thousands.

Counting hundreds of thousands of supporters in just its third month, the Pashtun movement has wielded the pictures and names of dead family members — along with the chant “What kind of freedom is this?” — as an indictment of unchecked military authority. From its start, the movement has been haunted by the question of how long the security forces would tolerate it before cracking down.

That time may be coming, many fear.

Despite its largest rally yet, a demonstration of tens of thousands in the northern city of Peshawar on April 8, the movement has labored under an only rarely interrupted media blackout. Interviews with editors and reporters at several outlets detailed pressure to avoid covering the Pashtun movement as an unmistakable sign that both the demonstrators and the press are facing a new level of threat from the military.

The country’s army chief, Gen. Qamar Javed Bajwa, ominously suggested at a public event last week that “engineered protests” threatened to reverse counterterrorism efforts by the military in recent years.
That military campaign, centered on operations against the Pakistani Taliban and some other militants in the country’s northwestern region — where most of the country’s Pashtuns live — has been credited with a drastic drop in terrorist attacks. It has greatly bolstered the military’s popularity, and tipped the balance of authority over the country’s institutions toward the army.

It has also led to the feeling that many of the country’s Pashtun population centers have been under functional occupation by the security forces. Using an alternative system of military counterterrorism courts along with an extensive network of covert jails, security and intelligence officers wield life or death power — often instantly — over the Pakistani region known as the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, a leftover from the British colonial system.
The new Pashtun rights movement — which is known by the initials P.T.M., from words that translate as Pashtun Protection Movement — is the product of years of outrage over the security forces’ power. It caught spark after the killing of a small group of Pashtun men, including an aspiring model named Naqeebullah Mehsud who was originally from the tribal areas, by police officers in Karachi in January. The officers have been accused of staging a fake shootout to cover up an extrajudicial killing spree.

Under the leadership of a young activist, Manzoor Pashteen, 26, the P.T.M. has evoked deep emotion from Pashtuns in Pakistan and Afghanistan, as well as overseas.

 

[Butter Chicken]

PA has learnt nothing from 1971

 

[mayfair]

1971 was made possible due to Indian intervention and swift demolition of the the Napaki army. Left to itself, what's the likelihood that an independent Bangladesh would have still been the outcome?

Napakis would have happily continued slaughtering East Pakistani Hindus and Bengali Muslims who opposed them, eventually driving them into India. The west was not going to bring it up in the UN or elsewhere and Niazi would have happily continued his policy of is haraamzadi kaum ki nasl badal doonga.

We saw what later happened in Balochistan or with LTTE when SL Gov and SLA finally decided to wipe out LTTE once and for all.

Napakis will happily slaughter Pashtuns as they did the Muhajirs in 1992 and have been slaughtering the Baloch since 2006. Without external military support, they are cannon fodder. What are the pathans gonna do if Pakjabis continue to kill their men, women and children?

 

[AMCA]

How the establishment is pushing Pakistan towards another civil war
By ignoring the genuine grievances of the Pakhtun, Baloch and Muhajirs in Pakistan, the establishment is repeating the same mistakes it made that led to the dismemberment of Pakistan in 1971

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Imaan Mazari-Hazir

APRIL 17, 2018

There has been a complete blackout of the Pakhtun Tahaffuz Movement (PTM) in the Pakistani media. The PTM, one of the largest movements in the country’s history, is a culmination of the efforts of ordinary people as opposed to a mass demonstration organized by any political party. Young activist, Manzoor Pashteen, is the latest victim of engineered social media campaigns, accusing him of being a ‘traitor’ and ‘blasphemer’. In fact, social media accounts, of Internet bots and those masquerading as journalists, have consistently strived to discredit and slander the PTM by trying to link it to Indian intelligence agencies (an age-old tactic of quelling dissent in the land of the pure).

By ignoring the genuine grievances of the Pakhtun, Baloch and Muhajirs in Pakistan, the security establishment is repeating the same mistakes it made that led to the dismemberment of Pakistan in 1971. The rhetoric that was proudly used as a propaganda tool back then is similarly being adopted now. Instead of this rhetoric and anti-state labelling, the solution to this conflict is rather straightforward, considering the basic nature of the demands of the PTM, namely ending enforced disappearances (which are already illegal under the Constitution) and safeguarding the rights of the Pakhtun as equal citizens of Pakistan.

There have been extrajudicial killings of the Pakhtun and Baloch for decades now and there has been no real change on ground vis-à-vis the security establishment’s policy towards these marginalised and oppressed groups. Now that these people have finally had enough and are demanding that they be treated with dignity, the State has decided to ignore their voices by deflecting from its own excesses.

Let us not forget that the only transition from one democratic government to another took place as recently as the year 2013. The establishment is not going to let go of its power and influence without a fight — even if their methods of warfare push the country into a civil war

As if this situation wasn’t alarming enough, another pot is bubbling just waiting to explode. The Tehreek-i-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) sit-in in Lahore ended after over a week with complete capitulation of the state apparatus to the organisation’s fascist designs. Their leader, Khadim Hussain Rizvi, is a proclaimed offender with whom the Pakistani military concluded a ‘peace agreement’ just a few months ago, after his party’s 21-day-sit-in in the federal capital. That a handful of the TLP activists, here and there, are able to bring the whole country to a standstill give the impression that Rizvi is being used to destabilise the civil government on the alleged pretext of blasphemy.

While all this has been going on, a media channel allegedly sympathetic to recently disqualified Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif got taken off air, while both the government and the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (PEMRA) denied having ordered that censorship.

One wonders if this is all part of the ‘Bajwa doctrine’ — the ‘off-the-record’ briefing by the Chief of Army Staff to a select group of media personnel on the supposed threats faced by Pakistan, and how the military intended to protect the judiciary against any threats.

It is no secret that the security establishment in Pakistan has been a sacred cow, above any and all criticism, immune from accountability by elected institutions, and the self-styled custodian of Pakistan’s ‘national’ interests. As per this narrative, journalists, academics, intellectuals or anyone even remotely critical of the establishment’s disastrous policies (in supporting extremists, destabilising democracy, etc.) has been abducted at random, tortured, murdered, or has simply ‘disappeared’.



As the civil government desperately holds on to the very little power in its hands, the establishment is preparing for full-blown chaos that allows them to sweep in as the chosen messiahs for the umpteenth time in Pakistan’s history. Unfortunately for the establishment, this is perhaps the first time in our history that ordinary people have spoken up in support of civilian supremacy, clearly pointing the finger at the former for the damage it has done to the State’s institutions.

Of course, such awareness needs to be systematically crippled through new and improved propaganda tactics, including but not limited to extending support to the judiciary. The military-judiciary nexus is, however, not a novel partnership in Pakistan. After all, previously judges in Pakistan have even taken oath under military dictators.

But someone on the outside (or even those who continue to buy the security-centric narrative) may wonder: what is all this chaos being fuelled for? The answer lies in a bird’s eye view of two things: budget allocations and corporate interests. The army in Pakistan has numerous business interests, including in fertilizer, cement, property development, banking, dairy, poultry and the list goes on. On top of their private commercial activity, they are also allocated massive shares of Pakistan’s budget without any debate.

Let us not forget that the only transition from one democratic government to another took place as recently as the year 2013. The establishment is not going to let go of its power and influence without a fight — even if their methods of warfare push the country into a civil war. But the question Pakistanis should be asking right now is not whether they fear a civil war but whether they are willing yet again to choose chaos in the long-term for a false sense of order in the short-term?

The writer is a lawyer. She Tweets: @ImaanZHazir

Published in Daily Times, April 17th 2018.

 

[Butter Chicken]

Establishment tried to prevent Pashtun Tahafuz Movement(PTM) rally in Lahore.They arrested PTM leaders,denied permission,filled the ground with sewage water,but nothing can stop this movement now.


Ye jo dehshadgardi wardi hai,iske peeche wardi hai.Army responsible for APS false flag attack

 

[Kazah]

Is it getting reported in mainstream pakistani media?

 

[AMCA]

Pak authorities use sewage water, goats to disrupt Pashtun rally
Activists were particularly upset that Mumbai terror attack mastermind Hafiz Saeed and Khadim Hussain Rizvi of the Tehreek-e-Labbaik, another extremist organisation, were allowed to hold rallies in Lahore without any hindrance.
WORLD Updated: Apr 23, 2018 07:45 IST

Leaders of a Pashtun movement vowed to keep up with their struggle after Pakistani authorities cancelled permission for their rally in Lahore on Sunday and used sewage water and entrails of goats to disrupt it.

The Pashtun Tahaffuz Movement (PTM) is fighting for restoration of human rights in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa as well as accountability for the Pakistan Army's actions in the tribal areas.

The provincial Punjab administration refused to grant permission for the rally at Lahore’s Mochi Gate. To make sure no rally was held, workers of the sanitation department flooded the ground with sewage water. Entrails of goats and other animals were also thrown about at the ground by government workers to create a pungent smell, independent observers said.

The PTM’s request for holding the rally was rejected due to “prevailing security circumstances”, an official said.

Ali Wazir, a member of PTM, in a statement had appealed the people of Lahore to gather at Mochi Gate to learn about the ordeal Pashtuns were going through in war-hit areas.

“We want to give details that don’t reach you due to media censorship,” a PTM member said. Various civil rights groups, including Lahore Left Front, Joint Action Committee and Women Action Forum, had announced support for the PTM event.

“We have informed the police that come what may, we will hold the rally at Mochi Gate," a member of Left Front told local media.

He said the PTM had twice requested Lahore administration for permission but they denied. “We have told them that we won’t accept their undemocratic ban, which is a violation of right of association.”

Activists were particularly upset that Mumbai terror attack mastermind Hafiz Saeed of the Jamaat ud Dawa and Khadim Hussain Rizvi of the Tehreek-e-Labbaik, another extremist organisation, were allowed to hold rallies in Lahore without any hindrance.




Mosharraf Zaidi, a political analyst, commented on Twitter: “Khadim Rizvi coddled by the Pakistani elite - civilian and military. Manzoor Pashteer (of PTM) demonised and denied NOC by the same elite. One spits at the constitution, The other demands constitutional raj. Why the dissonance?”

The five demands made by the PTM include the repeal of the laws under which the Federally Administered Tribal Areas are governed and the integration of FATA into Pakistan.

One such law, the draconian Frontier Crimes Regulation, gives unlimited powers to the law enforcement agencies and no legal protection or recourse to the people who live in that area.

The PTM has also touched a raw nerve by criticising the military operation in their area, particularly in Waziristan.

Officials have conceded that in the war against terror, more than 50,000 civilians have been killed in militant attacks and military offensives in the region.

More than 6 million were displaced in dozens of military operations as hundreds of thousands of families lost their businesses and livelihoods. The PTM insists that the bulk of these casualties were in FATA. They say the authorities are yet to clear land mines planted at the time of the fight against militants.

The PTM is also protesting the imposition of curfews and the arbitrary measures imposed by the army during its operations there as this bring untold hardship on the people of the area.

They have also demanded that the victims of forced disappearances, many of whom they suspect are in military custody, be presented before the courts.

The PTM has also criticised the military's role of siding with one militant group against another. The movement also insists that militants have not been wiped out of the areas as the army chief claims.

 

[Butter Chicken]

The response of the civilians——When Pak Army arrested and tortured some civilians after an IED blast at in North Waziristan.


Pak army forced tribals to remove PTM posters from their houses.This is how they replied!

 

[indus]

The days of Pakistan seems numbered.

 

[AMCA]

Not related to Pashtun uprising but still posting it here................


People in Nomal #GilgitBaltistan gather 2 protest against military-backed land grabbing for #CPEC. #Pakistan hell bent on turning locals into minority in their own land. Locals r expected 2 sacrifice life & land for a country that continue 2 deny them citizenship & basic rights

 

[Butter Chicken]

Pashtuns being racially profiled in Lahore markets

 

[Kazah]

pak army in panic mode