February 16th, 2022
Staff Report
ISLAMABAD
On Tuesday, February 15th a Karachi Anti-Terrorism Court (ATC) denied bail to incarcerated Member National Assembly (MNA) Ali Wazir. Ali Wazir has been booked under charges of sedition, treason, and hate speech in the Shah Latif and Sohrab Goth police stations of Karachi.
The sole representative of the people of South Waziristan in the national assembly is facing a third sedition FIR in Miranshah due to which the authorities have initiated the process of his transfer from Karachi Central to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
For the last two days, thousands of activists belonging to Ali Wazir’s socio-political organization, the Pashtun Tahaffuz Movement (PTM) have staged a sit-in outside the Sindh Assembly. They have been demanding that the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) led government in Sindh play a more proactive role in trying to ensure Wazir’s release, which has been kept incarcerated since December 2020.
Editor-in-Chief of VoicePk, Munizae Jahangir, had a conversation with the senior leader of the PPP, Khursheed Shah, on the matter. Shah from the get-go deflected responsibility by stating that the cases have been referred by the Federal Government and were not initiated by the provincial government he represents. But he goes on to maintain that such prolonged detention especially that of a public representative is condemnable and that his party is trying its level best to play a positive role in the situation despite the fact that not all matters are under their control.
Answering a question about Ali Wazir being labeled as a traitor Shah maintains that labeling people anti-state is an old habit of the state and that the label has been repeatedly utilized against politicians who do not conform to the dominant narrative and that Ali Wazir is suffering from the same fate.
Towards the end, Shah vehemently opposed PM Imran Khan’s decision to negotiate with the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) because there can be no justification for negotiating with the murderers of 80,000 Pakistanis.
