ISLAMABAD: Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) President Asif Ali Zardari has said that the teachers and staff of the Peshawar Army Public School (APS) bore the brunt of the tyrants and religious fanatics and shed their blood that brought the entire nation together to resolve to fight the extremists.
In a message on the third anniversary of the attack on APS, Zardari said that all those who were martyred in the gruesome attack on APS that day are national heroes. “We salute them and also pledge that their sacrifices will not go in vain,” he added.
He also deplored that the National Action Plan (NAP) devised to root out terrorism to avenge the blood of the martyrs had not been implemented in letter and spirit. Failure in implementing NAP amounts to rejecting the sacrifices of countless martyrs of the armed forces, paramilitary forces, police and the civilians in the fight against militancy and extremism, he added.
“On this day, we also call for bringing all perpetrators of the heinous crime to justice, and accountability of those who have failed in the implementation of the NAP,” he said.
Zardari lamented that banned militant organisations had resurrected under different names behind the facade of charity work. FATA reforms promised in the NAP were thrown to the wind as the proposed bill was mysteriously withdrawn from the agenda of the National Assembly without any reason a few days ago, he added.
The PPP president demanded the government to immediately bring the FATA Reforms Bill before the parliament, which paves way for the merger of tribal areas with the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa as part of the NAP, to pay homage to the martyrs of APS.