Scores of protesters gathered at the Rawalpindi Press Club to demand the immediate release of veteran trade union leader, Ghulam Dastagir Mehboob and other incarcerated political activists implicated in a number of false murder and terrorism cases across the country.
To bring into attention the state’s harassment against working-class activists using anti-terrorist and other state security laws, the protest was held country-wide organised by the Awami Workers Party (AWP).
Speaking to protestors, AWP Islamabad-Rawalpindi president, AWPsaid that Ghulam Dastagir has been languishing in Sheikhupura jail for almost four years in a trumped up murder case. He has been framed at the behest of strongmen seeking to free 150 acres of land at the so-called Dera Saigol farms from poor farmers.
In May 2012, during a protest by tenants for ownership rights, police firing led to the death of an unarmed man – Dastagir was framed for the murder even though a fact-finding mission by the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan found that the protesters were unarmed, while the police were using live fire and tear gas. The brother of the murdered, who was present at the time, said that it was the police who shot him.
Masud ul Hasan pointed out that there are innumerable holes in the police case against Dastagir yet he has no recourse before the formal institutions of the law which punish progressives whilst doing nothing to reign in the extremists who are a genuine threat to society.
Speaking on the occasion AWP Islamabad-Rawalpindi general secretary Nusrat Hussain said that Dastagir was only one of the many progressives who are facing the wrath of the coercive apparatus of the state. He mentioned AWP Hunza’s Baba Jan who was jailed for campaigning on behalf of the victims of the Attabad landslide, and Fazal Ilahi who was charged under anti-terror laws for organizing power loom workers in Faisalabad.
“We demand the release of these working-class activists, whose only crime was to exercise their democratic right to protest,” said AWP central information secretary Nisar Shah. “Why are these people in jail, while those who openly advocate terrorist violence are allowed to roam freely under the noses of state authorities?”
Alia Amirali of the national student’s federation said that these arrests illustrate how fearful the authorities and the ruling class are of any attempt by the people to organize for their rights. “These activists who are in jail are being punished for believing that the peasant farmers and factory workers of this country have the same constitutional rights as the feudal landowners, industrialists, government officers and military generals.”
