LAHORE: Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan (MQM-P) Head Dr Farooq Sattar on Thursday said the minorities in the country had been discriminated against and had been treated unfairly.
He said that even after 70 years, the feudal lords have not let democracy flourish in the country.
He expressed these views, while addressing a convention organised by the Centre for Social Justice in connection with the National Minorities Day, on Thursday.
Sattar said that the politics of interest and privileges instead that of ideology had become an order of the day.
He said, “We are a fragmented nation as every leader enjoys a mandate which he gained on the basis of region, territory, sect and language. There is not a single leader, who has a widespread support in all parts of the country.”
The MQM leader said that Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah was a leader with a vision, who in his speech on August 11, 1947, provided a constitutional structure of the new Muslim sovereign state highlighting minorities rights, three days prior to the creation of Pakistan. “Time has come that the Parliament includes Quaid’s that particular speech in the Constitution in the form of Article-2,” he added.
Punjab’s Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) President Qamar Zaman Kaira, Tariq Gill, Imtiaz Alam, Kanji Ram, Justice (retd) Nasira Javed Iqbal, Shanila Rawat, Asia Nasir and representatives of civil society and Christian community also attended the convention.