Arresting public reps insult to people’s mandate: Mohsin Dawar

PESHAWAR: Member National Assembly (MNA) from North Waziristan Mohsin Dawar on Sunday said that arresting elected representatives was an insult to the mandate of the people of Waziristan.

Speaking at a press conference, he vowed that their struggle would continue till the complete end of the war economy in the region.

Mohsin Dawar said that Pashtuns living and working in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) had invited them and they were stopped at the Bacha Khan International Airport in Peshawar as they reached there to take the flight. “We were told at the immigration counter that our names were in the Exit Control List,” he said.

He added that the immigration officials were not aware of the grounds their names were placed in the ECL. The parliamentarian from North Waziristan said they had been detained and were told after the plane took off that an FIR had been registered against them in Swabi. “Putting our names in the ECL on the basis of an FIR registered for raising voice against the injustice meted out to the Pashtuns is an extreme step,” he maintained. “The immigration officials even didn’t know that I had secured bail before arrest,” he pointed out.

He said that the Swabi public meeting was peaceful like other rallies of the Pashtun Tahafuz Movement but an FIR was registered against its organisers after the event. He said they were informed that they were barred from travelling abroad on the request of the Intelligence Bureau just a day before their schedule departure to UAE.

He said that when they were shifted to the FIA office they told the officials that they could not treat elected representatives in this manner and should have taken permission from Speaker of the National Assembly before arresting them. “None of the officials was aware why elected representatives were arrested in such a shoddy way,” he said, asking “who in Pakistan can take such steps in such urgency?”

He asked the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government to refrain from becoming an instrument of such unconstitutional acts as it would not only damage the province but also the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI).

He said that PTM would cease to exist the day all forms of war economy were eliminated. “Our struggle would continue till an end to earning money on Pashtuns’ blood,” he added.

To a question about their meeting with Prime Minister Imran Khan, he said that Imran Khan had asked them what steps should be taken to convince PTM to stop criticism of state institutions. “We replied that we will disband PTM the day you stop the war economy, stop distinguishing between bad and good Taliban and end support to terrorists,” he recalled.