Peshawar, Mar 25 (NVI) A day after the Pakistani Army shot dead two innocent youth in an unprovoked manner near the Bannu Cantonment in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province, a prominent Pashtun organisation today slammed the military and said Pashtuns are not safe in their own homeland.
The Pashtun National Jirga went to the extent of saying that Pashtuns are killed on a daily basis, leaving their kin to take their bodies in every district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
“Pashtun National Jirga stands with the families of those martyred and injured in direct firing by the army in Bannu,” its spokesman Barkat Afridi said in a statement.
He was referring to the incident near the Bannu Cantonment where the Army personnel shot dead, in direct firing, two youth passing by on a motorcycle.
“In this painful incident, after shooting the two, they (Army) kept them (the injured youth) with themselves, and did not give them to the families until they died. They they (army) gave the body,” Afridi said.
“We express deep sorrow and concern over the brutal massacre of Pashtuns and the lifting of bodies in every district of Pakhtunkhwa every day,” he said.
Wondering what was the crime of the victims, he asked, “Can no one now pass near the cantonment? Will we now become stateless in our own homeland?”
He noted that for the last four decades, “we (Pashtuns) have been lifting bodies.”
He said while education, healthcare and employment are distant dreams in Khyber Pakthunkhwa, even “life is not guaranteed in the Pashtun homeland.”
“The State of Pakistan has been watering the Dollar wars with Pashtun blood for the last four decades, but the provincial and federal governments are silent,” the spokesman said, adding “We warn the provincial and federal governments to fulfill the responsibility of law and order seriously.”
He added that “if they are just rubber stamps, then they should leave the chair.” (NVI)
