LAHORE: Repre­senta­tives of opposition parties continued to visit the offices of Dr Tahirul Qadri’s Pakistan Awami Tehreek (PAT) on Sunday, extending their support to his stance on the Model Town tragedy.

In a related development, the PAT is contemplating a move to take up the Model Town killings issue with international organisations to help the grieving families get justice.

Chaudhry Shujaat and Pervaiz Elahi, central leaders of the Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid (PML-Q), and Awami Muslim League’s Sheikh Rashid and Majlis Wahdatul Muslimeen’s Raja Abbas Nasir separately called on Dr Qadri and expressed their support for the PAT chairman’s demand for resignation of Punjab Chief Minister Shahabz Sharif and Law Minister Rana Sanaullah following the release of the Justice Ali Baqar Najafi-led tribunal’s report on the Model Town incident.

Leaders of the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) and the Pak Sarzameen Party (PSP) had visited the PAT chief the other day. All these parties (except the PSP which was not formed then) had fully supported the PAT’s long march on Islamabad and sit-in back in 2014. The PTI had, in fact, gone for a long march of its own and held a sit-in earning the sobriquet of PAT’s “cousin”, while workers of the MWM and the PML-Q had joined the PAT long march.

Copies of Najafi report to be sent to embassies, OIC to press for Shahbaz Sharif’s resignation

To the surprise of many, former president Asif Ali Zardari began the current spree of expression of support when he called on Dr Qadri this past Thursday. Though various leaders of the Pakistan Peoples Party had met Dr Qadri and expressed solidarity with him after the June 16, 2014 killings in a police raid on PAT’s Model Town offices, the PPP along with some nationalists and regional forces had distanced itself from the prolonged Islamabad sit-in staged by the PAT and the PTI.

The PPP-led forces had then supported the ruling PML-N in what they said “larger interest of democracy”. Contrary to the stance, Mr Zardari now encouraged Dr Qadri to come on roads for seeking justice by publicly assuring the Islamic scholar to board the container that had been used in the 2014 long march.

Mr Zardari also nominated senior vice-president Mian Manzoor Wattoo and Punjab president Qamar Zaman Kaira from his

party’s side for further coordination in extending “full legal and moral support” to the PAT.

Recalling the politics of 1970s, ’80s and ’90s, an official of the ruling PML-N said there was a time when anti-Bhutto or anti-PPP alliance would be cobbled, but now the PPP seemed to have hit a low in that and was looking out for every opportunity to be part of an anti-Nawaz coalition.

Requesting not to be named, he said the PML-N was well aware of the “intrigues” against it and that the party leadership had already initiated its efforts to activate the “pro-democracy” forces.

Meanwhile, the PAT is going to raise the Model Town issue before the international community.

A senior official of the party told Dawn that the Najafi report would be sent to all foreign embassies in Islamabad, and platforms of the European Commission, the Orga­nisation of Islamic Cooperation,

and the International Human Rights Commission would also be mobilised for pressuring Islamabad to remove the Shahbaz government in Punjab and ensure proper trial of those involved in the Model Town killings.

Published in Dawn, December 11th, 2017