In an uncivilized turn of events, the chief of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, Imran Khan was manhandled at the Punjab University Campus today. He was later arrested by the police. A group of students kept him detained on the campus and later turned him over to the police. According to Dawn’s Report:
Pakistan Tehrik-i-Insaaf chairman Imran Khan was arrested from outside the Punjab University’s new campus on Wednesday after he had been manhandled and detained in the campus allegedly by activists of the Islami Jamiat Talaba. Imran Khan had gone to the university at the invitation of a joint action committee of students.
The visit had been approved by Qazi Hussain Ahmed, chief of Jamaat-i-Islami, to which the IJT is affiliated. On his arrival at the campus, the PTI chief was confronted reportedly by a group of IJT activists who kicked him around and punched him. They took him to a room in the Centre for High Energy Physics and detained him there for about 45 minutes.
This is an interesting (and sad) turn of events. Imran Khan’s party and the mother party of IJT are both partners in APDM. Imran and Qazi have been seen together in many media photo shoots for the past year or so. Will today’s action by IJT guys will cause long term bad-blood between the two parties? It is left to be seen.
We strongly believe that inspite of political differences, no person deserves physical bashing and humiliation as was met out to Imran. Political differences should never be taken to such extreme where people use force to get their point across. It is wrong. Shame on those who manhandled him. I was recently reading an article on political bashing in the Wall Street Journal. It had a punch line which just kept resonating with me. It read:
Our politics suffer when passions overcome reason and vitriol becomes virtue.
Details on Imran’s manhandling can be read here, here, here and here.
From the emergency times:
Islamabad, Wednesday: Around 200 protestors, all exuberant and passionate, carried posters, wore black ribbons and waved the black flags as a sign of utter disappointment and despair in their Government’s policies. The protestors, mostly students from various universities of the capital chanted anti-Musharraf slogans. They demanded a free judicial system, lifting of curbs on media and a democratically elected head of the state. A minor of 5 carried a poster on his tender shoulders saying ‘ GO , UNCLE MUSHARRAF GO! ‘ which showed that even the younger lot of pakistans population is starting to speak up against the tyrannical rule of Musharraf and his dictator-like mindset. More student protests are planned at various universities of Islamabad, and a unified massive student movement will be launched very soon with-in the capital.
There are reports that even 3 of Imran Khan’s sisters, along with other women workers of PTI have been arrested this morning.
There was a big protest against IJT at Punjab university yesterday with 2-3 thousand students participating. More protests were planned for today, but haven’t received any updates on that so far.
There are two planned protests in Islamabad today, one being a media protest which is supposed to be taking place about this time and the other being a student protest a bit later in the day.
On wednesday, there was a protest near Ab Para. I have heard that it was well attended, but haven’t received any info on the estimated number of participants or any other details about how it went.
Ayaz Amir tells it like it is in today’s Dawn…
“But even in evil there can be some good. If May 12 exposed the true face of the MQM, Nov 14 has revealed the ugly face of the Jamiat and the Jamaat. Qazi Hussein Ahmed’s populist posturing had led many simpleminded souls to believe that the Jamaat had changed its spots. The incident with Imran dispels such illusions.
The Jamaat remains wedded to an ideology suspiciously close to fascism, (which makes one wonder about the uses to which Islam has been put in this country). From Gen Yahya onwards it has worked as a handmaiden of our spook agencies, the dark forces who have always undermined democracy. As a matter of policy its student wing has practiced unabashed violence to promote its political ends. Indeed, when the definitive history of the collapse of Pakistani education is written, the Jamiat’s ‘danda-bardar’ (baton-wielding) tactics will figure prominently in it.
Therefore any chastising of the Jamaat and its works is welcome. No one has educated the Jamaat and Jamiat more than the MQM. Indeed, about the only good thing the MQM has ever done, since its baptism at Zia’s hands in the mid-1980s, is to give the Jamaat a taste of its own medicine in Karachi. For this one service, if no other, the MQM is to be applauded.
This incident underscores an important lesson: that the religious parties, at least the two biggest — Qazi Hussein’s Jamaat and Maulana Fazlur Rehman’s JUI — can never be reliable partners in the struggle for democracy. They will always have an angle of their own and they will always be wired to the establishment.
PPP, PML-N, ANP, Tehrik-i-Insaf and the Baloch nationalists constitute the core of the dream alliance–the other elements of it being lawyers and civil society– which can still take Pakistan’s ship, now tossed about on stormy seas, to safer shores. The holy fathers have proved themselves to be beyond the pale. Let them stew in their own juice.”
Really like the last sentence! stewing in traitor Mullah Juice :)
@ Imran’s unpleasant event has been
Hijacked by the secular leftist Inqalabi
thugs. The historical cheaters.
Khaleej Times Editorial : A hero’s treatment?
http://tinyurl.com/ywg6oa
@ Ahmed Tariq…
when you say Imran ‘is not a good politician’..just what are you talking about?
so you want him to be like just about every other disgustingly filthy politician that we have ever had? you want him to become a Mullah and be in bed with whosoever is in power?
you want him growing fat off funds that are not his? youd rather he’s be Mr. 15%….????
I dont think there is a man of Imran Khan’s calibre on the political scene. Though he is not a people’s man, he has not proved to be a good politician, but as far as his constituency is concerned, he has done alot of honest and hard work. And now he is also popular in Swat and Waziristan (Hamid Mir stated this in his interview with Imran… while he was hiding). Imran has his integrity intact specially after his refusal to be the PM after 2002 Elections and after seeing his popularity in different universities in Lahore and everywhere else, I have a gut feeling that he might capture 5-6 seats this time around.
A person like him is what we need, to bring true development in terms of education and health. Economic growth rates do not matter to us. We want a prosperous Pakistan that will live ‘forever’, and that is only possible by pursuing education and health sectors.
oh this is beautiful….just beautiful… :)
PU students coupled with ISO run the Jamat-e-Jahili ragged on campus…
Mullahs on the run….
http://thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=81040