Re: Soldiers speak up!
And p.s. here is a excerpt of a nice piece, backed with facts from reputed media sources:
Not allowing the media at the time of operation makes some sense. However, not allowing them to enter the mosque immediately after the operation and a “ban on media personnel to visit hospital” and cold storage for dead bodies simply shows that there was too much for the regime to hide and plant.
It would be ridiculous on the part of relatives of the victims to insist looking in the mass graves for their loved ones, which the regime should have handed over to the relative in the first place.
An announcement to come and recognize your loved ones in the dead bodies at cold storage would have brought many to the front to show the estimate of missing people. May be that’s why the government was in a hurry and started digging and burying during the night. The laborers working on the graves have told BBC of finding “two and more bodies in one coffin.” And logically, more than 100 mass graves for 102 victims (as per the military regimes claim) just do not make any sense.
Dawn editorial on July 11, 2007 states:
“Eighty per cent of the operation,” to quote an army spokesman, had been completed to expel the terrorists from the Lal Masjid when these lines were written, and Abdul Rashid Ghazi had been killed, though resistance from hard-core militants was still going on, with the death toll in the vicinity of 150."
Note the figures of 150 dead by the time when 80 % operation was completed. And come back to the government’s figure of just 50 after 100% operation that was regurgitated by all the national and international media for a long time after completion of the bloody drama.
For the sake of discussion, even if we take the official figures of casualty as true, aren’t more than 100, including women and children, a significant number?
Couldn’t these lives be saved?
Of course, they “could have been saved” provided General Musharraf the had not “ordered operation before the end of negotiations” as we can see from “numerous reports” and personal testimony of those who were involved in the negotiations.
Mufti Usmani who was part of the delegation affirms that the two sides had reached an agreement. They wrote it down. In fact, the government Minister of Information inked it and took it share with General Musharraf, who rejected it and when Chaudhry Shujaat returned “things were back to the square one.” Moreover, at the same time, the military personnel on the ground “started harassing them to leave” as it was already too late for them to begin the operation.
This has been proved conclusively that the bloodbath at the mosque could have been avoided but Musharraf had other nefarious designs and malicious objectives to achieve. The “daily Ummat, July 11 report ” and interview with the two individuals, who were part of the final delegation, is part of the evidence against General Musharraf. Ghazi’s “last communication to the media” is far more credible than all the government reports.
The deceased Ghazi could be evil, so to say, but at the very least he would not lie to three TV channels “just moments before his death.” He said it repeatedly that he wanted the government to allow media to come in to see for itself if what the regime was claiming had any connection with the reality.
**If the government were true in its claims to foreign fighters and a cache of weapons in the mosque, it should have let the media in. What was it afraid of? It is not a blunder on the part of government. It was part of the strategic planning. With media’s access, the regime’s case would have fallen apart and it’s lies about foreign fighters and weapons would have been exposed leaving it with no justification to launch the bloody assault and score points with its foreign masters. The negotiating ulema have also refuted the regimes claim that Ghazi has asked for safe passage for foreigners. **
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