PTM holds rally in Karachi

KARACHI: The Pashtun Tahaffuz Movement (PTM) staged its first rally here on Sunday. A crowd of several thousand people gathered for the rally in Karachi's outlying Sohrab Goth suburb. Among the crowd of protesters were families of missing persons, holding pictures of their loved ones.

"The PTM was born out of the incident that happened in Karachi," Mohsin Dawar, one of the group's founders, told Reuters.

"The trauma and pain the Pashtuns of the Fata have experienced, the Pashtuns of Karachi have gone through a similar experience," he said.

Some of the protesters wore the red and black patterned hat as they waited for Pashteen to arrive at the rally. But Pashteen did not board his flight from Islamabad to Karachi on Saturday morning and a representative of local airline said his booking had been cancelled, Dawar said.

Dawar said Pashteen and three other PTM leaders had started on the more than 20-hour drive from Islamabad to Karachi but they were stopped several times along the way. "He has been stopped and detained for hours several times," Dawar claimed. Speakers at the rally said they would not leave until Pashteen arrived.