PAT announces 10-day schedule of protests, sit-ins

An emergency meeting of PAT central Core Committee was held here today under the chairmanship of PAT leader Dr Muhammad Tahir-ul-Qadri at the central secretariat. The meeting decided the schedule of protests to be held from August 20 to August 30 as part of Qisas and accountability movement.

According to the schedule, protests will be held in 77 cities on August 20 including Lahore, Peshawar, Hyderabad, Larkana, Faisalabad, Sibbi, Kohat, Dera Murad Jamali, Mansehra, Sakhar, Dera Ismail Khan, and Rahim Yar Khan.

Demonstrations will be held in 21 cities including Gujranwala, Sialkot, Narowal, Hafizabad, Mandi Bahauddin and Gujrat on August 21. 11 more cities including DG Khan, Layyah, Rajanpur and Muzaffargarh will host protests and sit-in on August 25. Protest demonstrations will be held in 20 cities including Rawalpindi, Quetta, Karachi, Jhelum, Chakwal, and Haripur.

Dr Tahir-ul-Qadri will announce the second phase of the protest movement in a mammoth demonstration to be arranged in Islamabad on August 30. He will address the protests and sit-ins taking place in 140 cities of the country through video link.

Addressing the Core Committee meeting, Dr Tahir-ul-Qadri said that the purpose of arranging protests and sit-ins is to seek justice for the martyrs of Model Town tragedy and rid the country of militancy and economic terrorism. He said that the way our workers were bathed in blood on June 17, 2014 cannot be ignored at any cost. He said that those who deprived the affected families of their fundamental right to justice will not be able to escape the law.

Dr Qadri said that we would tell the nation in the protest demonstrations how the country has been brought on the brink of destruction and how profit earning institutions were turned into loss-incurring ones by virtue of their handing over to the blue-eyed people. He said that the revelations of the Panama leaks are a mere drop in the ocean of corruption, adding that many such exposures will be made in future. He forewarned the government that if it tried to block the peaceful protests of PAT, then it would forget the sit-in of 2014.