Government of Pakistan announced a ban on religious and political gatherings nationwide after a bomb attack in Multan on Thursday, reporter learnt.
Interior Minister Aftab Khan Sherpao said that the ban on public gatherings except for prayers on Friday, the Muslim
sabbath (?) had been imposed to prevent any more attacks by terrorists.
He did not say how long the ban would last.
“The federal government has asked the provincial governments to impose a ban on all kinds of political and religious gathering,except from Friday prayers”, Sherpao told a press conference in
Islamabad.
He said “the provincial governments have been directed to fully implement this decision.”
Interesting. Will the ban on people to gather solve the problem of terrorism. And this seems like a knee-jerk reaction to stop political activity in the country. What do they say that, those who sacrifice their freedom for security, deserve neither their security nor freedom.
oh, its too late. This isn't gonna work. Do they think that the sectarian outfits only target people who are gathered for a religious or political gathering. What about the mosques, imambargahs???Today, however, despite the fact that all the extremist organizations are banned, sectarianism continues to exact its toll. It is only during the last decade that the number of sectarian killings has escalated. Assassinations, attacks on mosques and imambarghas and bomb blasts have claimed thousands of lives to date. As a consequence, there is no safe-haven, neither the mosques nor homes, neither the public nor the private transport is safe.
ISLAMABAD: Information Minister Sheikh Rashid on Sunday said there was no ban on religious and political gatherings and that only outlawed militant outfits were barred from holding public meetings.
Addressing a press conference, the information minister said that people with vested interests were spreading disinformation to malign the government. “Only outlawed militants groups working under new names have been barred from holding public meetings,” Sheikh Rashid
He said that Shias and Sunnis were living in peace and harmony but certain anti-Pakistan forces wanted to plunge the country into chaos. He would not rule out foreign involvement in the recent sectarian violence.
When Pakistan was formed in 1947, the Shias were amongst the major land-owners of Pakistan's Punjab, its granary, and many of the Sunnis, who migrated to Pakistan from India's Punjab, were largely poor landless farm workers, who had to earn their livelihood in their country of adoption by working in the farms of the Shias. The perceived exploitation of the Sunnis by the Shia landlords started the process of the polarisation of the two sects of Islam in Pakistan.
