Ethnic strife has started in Punjab University after five students were critically injured in a clash between Islami Jamiat-e-Talaba and students from Balochistan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and FATA, Pakistan Today has learnt.
According to the reports, students from Balochistan, KP and FATA organised a welcome party in a Pathan student’s room in Hostel No. 4 for the new students who had got admitted to the university. However, IJT members told the organisers that no party could be organised without their permission. The security officer of the university reached the location and resolved the matter ‘amicably’.
However, at around 10pm, members of IJT from both within and outside the PU reached Hostel No. 4, fired guns and hit the new students as well as the organiser. Some of the students were in critical conditions and were sent to the ICU. IJT also threatened the students from other provinces and told them that they would be killed if they entered the university.
In retaliation, Pakhtun students gathered and attacked IJT Nazim-e-Aala Rai Haq Nawaz’s room, who managed to escape the scene. Meanwhile, IJT’s members ransacked the office of the estate officer, Zubair Butt. For around 24 hours, around a dozen new students from the other provinces were not allowed to enter the university. The students approached Vice Chancellor Mujahid Kamran for help who said that he could not say anything to the IJT but would write to Punjab Chief Minster Shahbaz Sharif to provide security to the students. In the letter, the VC wrote that ethnic strife had started in the hostels and the “IJT have fortified their position in the hostels and the Pakhtoon students have been contacting Pathan students living in Lahore.”
Over 150 students from Balochistan, KP and FATA study in the PU. The students have threatened that if security were not to be provided to them by today (Friday) they would leave Punjab for good.
The students also held demonstration against IJT and said that it was terrorist organisation that was against education and should be banned. They said all kinds of weapons should also be banned in PU. Police officers from various stations visited the protesting students but did not extend any kind of protection to them.
“Why are people playing with our future? It is the Punjab government’s job to provide security to us. Our lives should be protected from these terrorists,” one of the injured Baloch students said, adding that students came to PU to study and not to learn the use of weapons. “This organisation is so strong that even the VC is afraid of them,” they said, adding that if the menace of IJT should be nipped in the bud.
Jamaat-e-Islami Deputy Secretary General Fareed Ahmed Paracha said that the PU administration and the police should resolve the issue according the facts on the ground. “I am very sad to hear about this incident, our sympathies are with the students who were injured and were barred from entering the university,” he said, adding that JI did not support any kind of ethnic strife.
Five injured as ethnic strife breaks out in PU
