Qissa Khwani firing victims remembered

PESHAWAR: The office-bearers and members of the literary, cultural and social welfare organisation, Gandhara Hindko Board, visited the Yagar-e-Shaheedaan (memorial to the martyrs) in Qissa Khwani Bazaar on Saturday to remember those scores of people who were either killed or injured when the British troops opened fire on the peaceful protesters in Peshawar on April 23, 1930.

A leader of the trading community Sharafat Ali Mubarak and the Board’s General Secretary Muhammad Ziauddin, led a procession to remember and praise the freedom fighters.

The participants reached the two historic monuments located in Chowk Shaheedaan in the form of a procession.

They were holding a large banner inscribed with slogans to remember those who were killed in the firing incident 86 years ago. They raised slogans to pay tributes to the victims who lost lives on this day.

The participants of the procession placed floral wreaths on the monuments and offered fateha for the sons of the soil.

Speaking briefly on the occasion, Sharafat Ali Mubarak and a noted Hindko writer, poet and research scholar, Muhammad Ziauddin, highlighted the sacrifice of the people offered in Peshawar for the glory of Islam and the cause of freedom.

They said the April 23, 1930 Qissa Khwani firing was an important incident of the freedom struggle that happened in the Walled City of Peshawar which, they deplored, had never been highlighted properly at the official level after the independence of the country.

Muhammad Ziauddin said the Board had always observed the Qissa Khwani Martyrs Day to spotlight the role of our forefathers in the struggle for freedom.

“The board has staged rallies, arranged seminars, conferences, photographic exhibitions and brought out two publications in the past to highlight the great sacrifice. It is needed because the freedom was not presented to us in a platter; our elders launched a great struggle for that,” he said, praising all those who remember this great sacrifice of our elders by gathering at Qissa Khwani every year on April 23.