SHAFAQNA PAKISTAN (Shia News Agency)
EVEN as the stand-off between the government and its opponents continues, the shocking, terrible events of Saturday evening as anti-government protesters and a brutal police force fought it out on Constitution Avenue need to be urgently investigated to prevent a repeat in the hours and days ahead.
Several confirmed deaths, hundreds injured, many more bruised and battered – whatever the legality or otherwise of what the protesters were attempting, they should not have been met with the kind of violent force that the civilian-run police of Islamabad and Punjab used against them.
The PML-N governments at the centre and in Punjab almost seem determined to make police violence a defining aspect of their rule.
Surely, having had weeks to prepare for any eventuality and having already experienced the disaster that was the Model Town incident in June, whoever was managing the police response on Saturday ought to be sacked, and worse.
Yet, as with so much else in the terrible morass that has become the PTI/PAT siege of Islamabad, it was also the two anti-government leaders, Imran Khan and Tahirul Qadri, who proved to be reckless in the extreme with the lives of their supporters on Saturday evening.
Mr Khan’s inflammatory rhetoric was specifically designed to whip his supporters into a frenzy – and for the so-called PTI tigers to take on the law-enforcement personnel and defeat them, as Mr Khan had vowed would happen.
But whatever Mr Khan did, he was comprehensively outdone by the premeditated and deliberate violence unleashed on the signal of Mr Qadri to his supporters.
If anything, it appeared that a naive Mr Khan had been lured into escalating an already dangerous situation into outright violence by a conniving Mr Qadri.
While both the PTI and PAT supporters marched towards the police lines, it was really the male PAT workers who appeared determined to trigger violence.
Organised, armed with non-lethal weapons, working in unison and to a plan, it was the PAT workers who lured women, children and helpless PTI supporters into the line of fire and from there it was the PAT workers who fought most of the pitched battles with the police through the night.
Mr Qadri and his PAT workers have much to answer for.
Dealing with Mr Qadri’s violent agenda though is the government’s responsibility. While guns were not used, deaths and injuries still occurred on Saturday.
That is simply a terrible performance by the police yet again.
pakistan.shafaqna.com
