by Salman Ashraf
Residents of Pakistan’s tribal areas protested outside the National Press Club, Islamabad, against the ongoing 6th national census procedure for FATA’s internally displaced people (IDPs) here on Sunday.
Students, youth, lawyers, human rights activists and many others from FATA participated in the protest.
The protesters demanded that a large number of the IDPs have not gotten back to their home towns yet and rued the fact that the government had decided to go ahead with the census. There were a number of people from FATA gathered carrying placards and banners that read “Count IDPs as FATA citizens”.
Khan Zeb Burki, the organizer of the protest, said that the process of repatriation of IDPs had not been completed and a large number of IDPs were living outside FATA because they had not been sent back to their home towns. Burki added that a huge number of FATA’s citizens would not be counted as FATA residents and it will negatively affect the demography of their area of origin.
Rejecting the ongoing census process in the tribal areas, a protester expressed his concern over the means and methods of the census as the security situation in the tribal areas is still volatile.
The protesters demanded a separate column in the national census form for the IDPs. If it is not possible, then the census process must be postponed until the completion of the repatriation process.
Samreena Khan, a social activist from South Waziristan, filed a writ petition in the Islamabad High Court(IHC) last Tuesday under article 199 of the constitution asking the court to take extraordinary steps to ensure the true reflection of the FATA population in the census.
Talking to Pakistan Today, Samreena said that as per the directions of the Supreme Court (SC), the census process has to be completed within two months of the commencement date, March 15. However, a large number of FATA’s residents are still living their lives as IDPs in various parts of the country which will hinder the actual representation of the tribal areas in the census report and deny the people of FATA their due share in the national finance commission (NFC) award, as well as representation in national and provincial assemblies and local bodies.
Therefore, she has pled that the court intervenes for the provision of relief that the court deemed appropriate in the circumstances.
“The camps are not our permanent homes but FATA is, and so we demand that the government make a separate column on the census form to count IDPs as FATA citizens,” Samreen added.
If their demands are not met, then the tribes will boycott the ongoing census, she claimed.
