Musharraf should be punished for his crimes:Munawar Hasan

Lahore:Ameer, Jamaat e Islami, Pakistan, Syed Munawar Hasan, has said that if the government showed any weakness in Pervez Musharraf’s trial for treason, the

headstrong establishment would make the elected government a failure.

Addressing the participants of JI workshop at Mansoora on Tuesday, he said that if Pervez Musharraf was sentenced under article six, no adventurer could dare to set aside the constitution in the future.

Syed Munawar Hasan said that the masses had high hopes from the Nawaz Sharif government but its performance so far had been poor. Drone attacks were continuing, making a mockery of the country’s sovereignty. The government could not provide any relief to the people on load shedding while the federal budget prepared under the IMF dictation had led to price hike, adding to the miseries of the people.

The JI Ameer said that the US was trying to benefit from Pakistan’s strategic position in order to get control over the Central Asian states’ resources, to check China’s increasing role in the region, to build India as regional police man and also to humble Iran. The US, he said, itself was holding dialogue with the Taliban but was refraining Islamabad from adopting that course. However he said, that none of the region’s issues could be settled without Pakistan’s involvement. As such, the government should realize the strategic importance of the country and fully benefit from that.

Continuing, Syed Munawar Hasan said that the secular lobby was busy in a poisonous propaganda against the creation of Pakistan and the Pakistan ideology. Besides, he said, different TV channels were giving advertisements to prove that the US was heavily contributing to Pakistan’s development and progress. He said that the religious and political parties would soon join hands to launch a movement to foil this propaganda.

Referring to the Karachi situation, the JI Ameer said that Karachi was a representative city not only of Pakistan but the whole Islamic world, which had unfortunately, fallen pray to the MQM’s extortion and target killings. The independence and human rights of the people of Karachi had been usurped. He said that no one could dare to touch a common MQM worker, not to speak of killing an MQM MPA. He said that a war had begun between the workers and the leadership of the MQM in which the common citizens were falling victim. The government and the security agencies were aware of the great game going on there. It was the duty of the government to take effective steps for the protection of the life and property of the citizens, he added.