Press release
The Awami Workers Party (AWP) strongly condemns the unprovoked firing by security personnel on peaceful protestors in Bannu and demands immediate and exemplary action against the perpetrators.
The party also salutes the historic peace march undertaken by tens of thousands of ordinary Pashtuns under the ‘Bannu Ulasi Pasoon’ guise. It fully supports their demands for an end to unaccountable wars, military operations and state sponsorship of religious militancy.
AWP president Akhtar Hussain has said that AWP has consistently challenged the totalitarian logic of the so-called ‘war on terror’ through which the military establishment has arrogated immense power in the name of fighting terrorism while systematically supporting ‘good’ versus ‘bad’ Taliban.
Thousands of innocent people have paid the price for this disastrous state policy in the forms of deaths, displacements and enforced disappearances.
The AWP president said that the party will continue to support the peaceful aspirations of the Pashtun people and resist the establishment’s agenda of full-fledged militarisation of the state, the brunt of which is faced by the long-suffering people of ethnic peripheries like the ex-FATA districts and Balochistan.
The AWP condemns the relentless state propaganda against all voices of peace in the war-ravaged Pashtun regions and stands in solidarity with the Bannu Ulasi Pasoon.
The khaki-led Pakistani ruling class wants to extend its control over Pashtun and other ethnic peripheries, including by extracting natural resources, while denying the most basic constitutional rights to the people of these regions, including their right to peacefully protest.
In so doing, the Pakistani state continues to play to the tune of imperialist powers that have subjected the region to incessant wars and intrigue for decades.
The AWP calls upon all progressive forces to come together to resist the intensifying militarization of state and society and build a genuinely democratic alternative in which all forms of oppression and exploitation are eliminated.
Issued by the Information Secretary
The Awami Workers Party