ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan government has claimed that many illegal Afghan nationals and trained miscreants were among the participants of last week’s protest of the opposition party Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI).
The interior ministry on Sunday released a detailed account of the events regarding the protest. The security forces had cleared the Blue Area of protestors following an order of the Islamabad High Court.
It is pertinent to mention that the PTI, in the early hours of Wednesday (November 27) announced that it was calling off its Islamabad protest sit-in “for the time being”, after a government action in the city’s Red Zone ended in the party leadership’s quick retreat.
The ministry also outlined its discussions with PTI prior to the protest march and the subsequent developments, including violent incidents and the impact on the economy. “Given the sensitivity of Belarusian President and Chinese high-level delegation visit, PTI was initially asked to postpone the protest but on their persistence to continue with the protest,” the statement said.
(Photo by AFP)
According to the statement the PTI protest involved trained miscreants and many illegal Afghan nationals who spearheaded the riots and violent activities throughout the march. It said that those miscreants, employed as the violent vanguard, comprised of approximately 1500 hard-core fighters were working directly under absconder and proclaimed offender Murad Saeed.
“This vanguard group, using militant tactics violently attacked the LEAs and breached the blocks with the help of government machinery paving the way for the second wave of vehicles and protestors to cross. It must be noted that LEAs personnel, despite sustaining grievous injuries, exhibited a high degree of restraint against these violent protesters led by trained miscreants,” it further said.
It added that throughout the protest march from Peshawar to Red Zone Islamabad, violent protestors of PTI aggressively engaged with law enforcement agencies (LEAs) repeatedly using firearms and all sorts of other weaponry including steel slingshots, stun grenades, tear gas shells and nail-studded batons to force their way to Red Zone Islamabad.
The ministry said that during this, a vehicle also ran over Rangers personnel performing duty at a check post in Islamabad, resulting in the killing of three Rangers soldiers and critical injuries to five.
It added that the Pakistan Army was deployed in Islamabad under Article 245 of the Constitution only to secure key government installations and foreign diplomats in the sensitive Red Zone while ensuring a secure environment for high-profile foreign dignitaries visiting the country.
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“LEAs comprising Police and Rangers were employed without live ammunition to disperse this violent mob while Army neither came in direct clash with these miscreants nor employed for riot control,” the ministry said.
The ministry stated social media accounts of the PTI resorted to planned and coordinated massive fake propaganda of deaths caused by LEAs so as to divert attention from this senseless, violent and failed activity.
It added the major hospitals of the Capital city after due diligence rubbished reports of alleged gunshots and casualties inflicted by LEAs.
“However, sustained fabricated social media campaigns, using old and AI-generated clips are being viciously undertaken by PTI and joined by other inimical elements. There have been multiple false claims of deaths ranging from tens to hundreds to thousands on social media as well as PTI political leadership and their official pages,” it said.
The ministry believed certain elements of foreign media also fell prey to this fake news and propaganda without any credible evidence.
It deplored the Chief Minister of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa for making baseless inflammatory statements against institutions, using the provincial Assembly as a platform to distort facts and spread blatant lies, rather than being ashamed of inciting innocent youth of KP for such undesirable activities.
“It is concerning to note that 39 lethal weapons including 18 automatic weapons have been recovered from the violent protesters and that amongst the apprehended offenders there are more than three dozen paid liens,” said the ministry.
Monetary losses
The interior ministry said during the violent protests, initial estimates suggest damages to the tune of hundreds of millions. Besides, 11 vehicles of the LEAs were damaged including prison vans set ablaze.
“Due to these violent protests, indirect losses to the economy are estimated to be Rs192 billion per day. In addition to that, significant expenditure is incurred on taking necessary security measures. While the plundering of the financial resources by the KP Government are separate,” it said.
However, as per the PTI’s claim, nearly 1,000 of its workers were arrested by the law enforcers in the late-night crackdown against the crowd who had gathered in Islamabad’s D-Chowk to secure release of party’s founder Imran Khan who remains incarcerated for more than a year.
