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AWP activists seek release of their leader

REPORT in Dawn, May 25th, 2017
ISLAMABAD: The Awami Workers Party (AWP) activists on Wednesday staged a protest in front of the National Press Club, demanding the release of their leader Baba Jan.

They also sought the release of other political activists who were arrested in Gilgit-Baltistan ahead of a final hearing of a review petition by the GB Supreme Court Appellate Bench against Baba Jan’s life sentence.

Baba Jan is a member of AWP’s federal Executive Committee.

Speaking on the occasion, AWP Information Secretary Farman Ali said Baba Jan had spent most of the past five years in prison for a crime that he never committed and his actual crime was that he fought for the rights of Hunza Valley’s people who, like the rest of GB’s population, continued to be deprived of fundamental constitutional rights despite serving Pakistan for 70 years.

He said the 33-year-old Baba Jan had in 2011 demanded repatriation of the victims of the Attabad Lake tragedy, but was wrongfully framed in a case of sedition, and this reflected the deep-seated colonial mindsets of Pakistan’s state managers who criminalise any and every democratic demand of GB’s people.

AWP Punjab deputy secretary Alia Amirali said that it was an irony that millions of Pakistanis visited the GB mountains, while much of Pakistan’s water flows from the same area, yet the people of the region continue to be treated as second-class citizens.

She said that Baba Jan was a hero of hundreds of thousands of youth in GB and was quickly acquiring the same status amongst young progressives in other parts of the country as well. https://www.dawn.com/news/1335276/awp-activists-seek-release-of-their-leader

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