QUETTA (TLTP): Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari and Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) Vice-President Maryam Nawaz reached Quetta on Thursday to express solidarity with the bereaved Hazara families.
Addressing the Quetta sit-in, the PPP chairman said that the prices of everything in this country have skyrocketed, but the blood of its labourers and its lawyers remains cheap.
“Unfortunately, we come from a country where even the dead have to be dragged into politics,” he said. The PPP chairman said he could not gather words to console the Hazara community. “You have staged protests previously, and are out on the street again today, with just one demand… the right to life!” the PPP chairman added.
Bilawal said he came from a family of martyrs, yet his family too has been unable to provide justice to its own martyrs. However, he added, “I promise you that till I am alive, till I am politically active we will only demand that the poor of this country be allowed to live peacefully”.
The PPP chairman said, “We call on this state that the most patriotic people in this country are sitting in front of you, if you can’t provide justice to them who you can provide justice to then?” The state has to first and foremost protect the life of its citizen, Bilawal added.
“We want to remind you [the state] that you promised the APS kids that you will end terrorism, but you could not. You promised the implementation of the National Action Plan, but you have failed at that too,” he stated.
“I am not asking you to provide justice to Benazir Bhutto or Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, I am only asking you to provide justice to the labourers,” he further said.
PML-N Vice-President Maryam Nawaz in her address criticised Prime Minister Imran Khan for not coming to Machh to condole the killings of the Hazara miners.
“Doesn’t your shamelessness have any bounds?” the PML-N leader asked PM Imran while addressing the Hazara community. “All they are asking is that you come here and condole with the family members and pray for the departed souls. Is your ego bigger than those whose coffins are laying here,” she stated.
Condoling with the family members for the slain coal mine workers on behalf of former prime minister Nawaz Sharif and the entire PML-N , Maryam said that she cannot even begin to imagine what the family members of the victims must be going through. “I do not have the words,” Maryam said, adding that, “It is only the one who suffers the loss who can really understand what it feels like to be in such a situation.”
Maryam, in reference to the Premier, said she knows that the Hazara community were calling upon a ‘shameless’ person to come and meet them.
“Political differences aside, it is your [Imran Khan] obligation to come here and listen to these people,” she said. “You are a parent yourself. Try to put yourself in their shoes for a moment and understand their pain. For God’s sake have some mercy on these people,” the PML-N leader appealed.
Maryam said she has been informed by the mourners that they would not remove these coffins even if the Prime Minister does not show up for 100 days. “If you do not come and condole with them [the Hazaras], then you will not be allowed to sit in Islamabad by the people,” Maryam said.
“May Allah be with you. May Allah give your strength and patience to bear the loss, May Allah make your lives easy,” the PML-N VP prayed for the families of the bereaved.
