KARACHI, Oct 14: Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz leader Pervez Rashid has stressed the need for a united front, irrespective of party affiliations, against enemies of education and learning in the country.
The PML-N leader who was chief guest at launching ceremony of a book ‘Jail ja Deenh-Jail joon Ratiyoon’, a diary published by another party leader, Ismail Rahu, at the Arts Council on Sunday said the situation had worsened to such an extent that there were people who wanted to ban seeking of knowledge.
Without naming 14-year-old Malala who was attacked recently, he said that a girl in Swat was fired upon and his only crime was to persuade other girls to get education.
He said that it was not only Swat’s problem, such religious extremists were spread all over and the manner with which they had treated the girl in Swat had “made us fear they will snatch books from our children too the first chance they get”.
The situation was even worse than it was under Musharraf’s dictatorship and people were compelled to think whether they did the right thing to struggle for restoring democracy, he said.
Speaking about his book, Ismail Rahu said the dingy, inhuman and unconstitutional conditions in the prison and the different people he met during his days of imprisonment prompted him to pen the book. He held the rulers had even bargained away Sindh in a bid to save their government.
Earlier, Saleem Zia, Madad Ali Sindhi, Dasgir Bhatti, Dr Ayub Shaikh, Dr Munir Bhurgari, Dr Akash Ansari, Dr Darshan Lal, Zulfiqar Halepoto, Nazeer Leghari, Tahir Hasan Khan, Mujahid Barelvi and Hafiz Nizamani termed the book a piece of literature which depicted cruel realities of prison life and was also a treatise on political and economic conditions under Musharraf era.
Dawn
