LAHORE – Aman Itehad and activists of civil society organised a ‘peace and solidarity’ rally from the GPO to Charing Cross on the first day of 2011. Similar rallies were also organised under the banner of Aman Ittehad in 108 locations all across Pakistan to raise voice against various issues and to high light the demands of people of Pakistan.
Supreme Court Bar Association President Asma Jahangir, Hina Jillani, Khawar Mumtaz, IA Rehman, Mohammad Tahseen and Irfan Mufti addressed the rally. The speakers believed that Pakistanis had been denied rights and benefits of the citizenship of an independent and sovereign state for the past six decades and mandatory safeguards must specifically be provided to all citizens, including non-muslims, for the protection of their religious, cultural, ethnic, linguistic, economic and political rights and interests.
These safeguards must encourage transparency and accountability with a view to creating a politically stable and socially responsive state that ensured all its citizens a life of dignity, they said. All parallel judicial systems especially the Federal Shariat Court should be immediately abolished, they demanded.
Equal opportunity and rights must be ensured to all citizens through the strengthening of institutions and the supremacy of the parliament and Pakistan should become a state that promoted peace through a policy of non-interference and regional trade, they stressed.
They also demanded provincial autonomy and parliament to frame laws and oversee their implementation so as to protect particularly the marginalized. They demanded that a social contract must be framed between citizens, and between citizens and the state, while laws and mechanisms for their implementation must be in harmony with this document and all conflicting laws must be repealed.
All policies, international and inter-provincial relationships, must conform to the collective will of the people.
