Father of APS victim resilient as govt issues FIR over PTM activism

Fazal Advocate has been a stalwart of the Pashtun Tahafuz Movement (PTM) since it gained traction after the Pashtun sit-in in Islamabad following the extrajudicial murder of Pashtun youth Naqeebullah Mehsud at the hands of then Malir SSP Rao Anwar.

But giving his time and energy to the movement is something that Fazal Advocate does not just do because of his ethnicity, but because he is acutely aware of the pain that the death of a close family member can cause.

Fazal Advocate lost his son in the Army Public School (APS) Peshawar attack of 2014. Since then he has been advocating not just the rights of those parents who lost their children in the tragedy, but also the recovery of Pashtun missing persons and the atrocities committed against the people in the tribal regions. He has been at the forefront for demands of a judicial commission into the APS tragedy.

On Friday, the father of the APS victim was declared a proclaimed offender by the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) authorities that have ordered his arrest.

“We are not the ones to be afraid or to go into hiding,” he said while speaking to Pakistan Today.

Over the phone, his voice was unshaken and full of resolve. He made it absolutely clear that no FIR was going to stop him from doing what he was doing because nothing could stop him from working with PTM.

“We are unmoved. It is our constitutional and democratic right to protest and we are simply exercising it,” he said.

At PTM gatherings, Fazal gives rousing but bone-chilling speeches and demands that the parents be told the truth about what happened at APS. By now, he has become one of the names awaited by the crowds at PTM rallies.

“Manzoor Pashteen is not an agent of RAW or NDS,” he said at the PTM’s April rally in Lahore.

“Manzoor Pashteen is an agent of the martyrs of APS, and it is the martyrs of APS who are funding the PTM,” he said to the crowds’ roaring approval.

Speaking to Pakistan Today, Fazal Advocate promised that not just his, but the entire movement’s spirits are high.

“Peaceful protest is the civilised way to go about things, and despite the barbarity, this is how we will continue to do things,” he concluded.