As the nation was celebrating the Pakistan Day on Thursday to commemorate the Lahore Resolution of 1940, thousands of marchers at the heart of city, the MA Jinnah Road, were ironically asking the UN and global powers to support their struggle for the independence of Sindh.
The participants of the Azadi March, organised by the nationalist party Jeay Sindh Qaumi Mahaz (JSQM), also announced that they reject the Pakistan Resolution. Mostly hailing from the interior districts of the province, the participants started gathering at residence of JSQM chief Bashir Qureshi in Gulshan-e-Hadeed and culminated into a massive rally that reached the Tibet Center.
Smaller rallies from Pipri, Quaidabad, Malir, Drig Road, Karsaz, Baloch Colony also merged into the main procession. The petrol pumps along Shahrah-e-Faisal and the other routes of the rally were closed and all link roads of the MA Jinnah Road were also sealed by law enforcement agencies with the help of containers, tents and trucks.
Addressing the participants, the JSQM chairman said the residents of Sindh from the perspective of homeland, language, culture, history and on the basis of mutual socioeconomic interest are separate nation as per international parameters and standards. “They possess the right of, as per internationally recognised right sovereignty and self- determination, making their decisions related their socioeconomic and culture prosperity,” he added.
“On the other hand Pakistan has never been a country in any period of history; neither the people living there have any proper local and indigenous one language as per international parameters, national ideology, nor a homogenous culture. Their traditions are different from each other; and even their economic interests are not identical,” he noted. “Therefore it is deception to call Pakistan one nation and its people one nation.”
Qureshi observed that the British made Punjab the chieftain of the newly emerged Pakistan and made Sindh its part. He pointed out that to make the original people of Sindh a minority, religious riots were plotted to compel 1.3 million local Sindhi Hindus to undertake migration while settlers wore allotted 2.5 million acres of land of Sindh and their property in bogus claims. “I appeal to the world community particularly world powers including America, Britain, Russia, China and France to support the freedom of Sindh,” he added.
MURDERED: A 13-year-old employee of a tyre puncture shop was shot dead near Safoora Chowrangi, allegedly by the participants of the JSQM rally. Witnessed claimed armed participants of the procession shot the boy. However, the party denied its involvement in the incident.
