Staff Report
KARACHI: The leader of the Jeay Sindh Qaumi Mahaz (JSQM) on Wednesday advised Mr Zafrullah Jamali to go on a diet himself, in a retort to the prime minister’s remark on Monday that the 11 members of the group who were on a hunger strike for nearly a month were actually dieting.
“Mr Zafarullah Jamali himself needs dieting, and not the Jeay Sindh members who are fasting since Feb. 11,” Bashir Qureshi, the chairman of the JSQM, said.
“Mr Jamali should be aware of the consequences of loyalty to the Punjab-based ruling establishment. He should not be more loyal than the king,” Mr Qureshi said when journalists asked for his response to the prime minister’s disparaging comment.
He told journalists at the camp outside the Karachi Press Club where the 11 are on a “fast unto death” that his party was under immense pressure from supporters to order the abandonment of the hunger strike and adopt an alternative mode of protest protest against the construction of the Greater Thal Canal and Kalabagh Dam.
Fatima, a councillor from Dokri, in Larkana district, who was accompanied by two of her children, asked Mr Qureshi to reconsider the hunger strike decision. The JSQM leader said intellectuals, writers and journalists and almost all Sindh-based parties had urged him to do the same.
He complained the government was so callous it had taken no notice of the fast.
Mr Qureshi warned that Sindh would perish from hunger and thirst if the government went ahead with the controversial water projects.
He recalled that the Sindh government had recently them the projects after the Sindh Assembly had done the same.
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_11-3-2004_pg7_38
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