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| India-Pakistan |
| Provinces warned about Sipah-i-Sahaba: minister |
| 2009-08-13 |
| [Dawn] The government told the National Assembly on Tuesday it had asked provinces to keep a watch on the banned Sipah-i-Sahaba group, which is accused of fomenting recent violence in the Punjab province's Jhang and Gojra towns. Interior Minister Rehman Malik acknowledged there was a lot of truth in concern voiced by an opposition lawmaker from Jhang who said the government must act against the extremist religious group to avoid the kind of situation it had to face in Swat valley of the North West Frontier Province after Taliban rebels were allowed to thrive there. The minister said it was a fact that Sipah-i-Sahaba had had been involved in terrorist activities in the past and added: 'The provincial governments have been asked to keep a watch on its activities.' PML-Q member Sheikh Waqqas Akram said Sipah-i-Sahaba activities were going on in Punjab unchecked by both the provincial and federal goverments and urged the PPP-led ruling coalition: 'For God's sake, you take things seriously.' He said it had taken a struggle of some 15 years at a cost of hundreds of lives to subdue religious extremists in his Jhang district who were known for fomenting sectarian violence, and complained that 'under a conspiracy these elements have been given an opportunity to make mischief again', without specifying by whom. The member said all of some 200 Sipah-i-Sahaba activists arrested in Jhang after a judge took a suo motu notice of the July 21 violence were later released 'one by one' and that he learned during a visit to Gojra that members of the same group attacked Christians in Gojra for unproven blasphemy, burning seven of them alive. 'Don't leave us at the mercy of these Maulvis,' Mr Akram said in an appeal to the government. He expressed his surprise that a leader of the group had been allowed to address the arrested group activists in jail and to go around the country without regard to what he called restrictions for banned organisations. The interior minister said although two religious teachers had led processions from two Sipah-i-Sahaba mosques that engaged in Gojra violence, but said 'we must wait for a report of inquiry being conducted by a high court judge'. He acknowledged that under the existing rules and regulations the provincial governments were 'supposed to monitor' the banned groups, whose present number he put at 29. A PML-N member from Multan district, Rana Mahmood-ul-Hassan, called for a joint action by the Punjab and Sindh police to check what he called heavily armed outlaws who he said kidnapped some 150 people for ransom, including 37 from his district, over the past few months. PPP chief whip and Labour and Manpower Minister Khurshid Ahmed Shah said the ruling coalition would ask the interior ministry and the two provincial governments to take notice of the situation in which the member said the kidnappers would seek refuge in Sindh when pursued by the Punjab police and cross back into Punjab when chased by Sindh police. |
| Posted by:Fred |