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The Right To Protest : edit in The Nation, Nov 8, 2020


Police brutality and undue use of force are terrible occurrences everywhere around the world and need to be immediately investigated in order to preserve the integrity of law and order. The stakes become even higher when undue force by officials is applied during a protest—it threatens both the right to life and right to protest. Law enforcement officials are meant to protect peaceful protestors, not put their lives at risk.

That is why the recent incident of a death of a farmer, by alleged police brutality, is so deplorable. The protest had been arranged legally by a group of farmers who had gathered on Tuesday for demanding fixing the support prices of wheat at Rs2,000 and of sugarcane at Rs300 per 40 kg, and introducing a flat rate of Rs5 per unit for farm tubewells. These were reasonable demands that farmers had every right to register their protest for. Instead, one of the protesters, Ashfaq Langrial, expired during the protest under mysterious circumstances, with his fellow protestors claiming that it was due to police torture and inhaling fumes from chemical-mixed water used by the police water-cannon against the protestors.

The death of a protestor because of alleged police brutality is horrific and holds a lot of weight—it is an attack against free speech and protest. Protest is the fundamental right of every citizen, yet unfortunately this right does not seem to be taken seriously by the state. Too many small protests, particularly by non-influential and underprivileged groups like farmers are met with police harassment regularly. Measures like water cannons or fumes require a strict threshold of violence to be used; yet this threshold is rarely respected, with law enforcement regularly using these tactics to disperse protesters.

The government has been claiming how tolerant it is by allowing the PDM protests—it needs to walk the walk by investigating police misconduct in these smaller, less-televised protests also. This death needs to be investigated, the victim’s family given justice and the claim of alleged use of chemicals in water needs to be taken very seriously.https://nation.com.pk/08-Nov-2020/the-right-to-protest

Silenced protests: Editorial in The News, November 7th, 2020
We do not often hear from the majority of the people who make up our country. These include the farmers who grow for us the food that is vital to the survival of each of the 220 million citizens of the country and the children who live with them. The country’s farmers have been ignored for too long. The media rarely covers them since it is centred in urban areas and takes little note of what’s happening in the rural belt of the country. In addition, farmers themselves cannot reach means of mass dissemination of news, such as newspapers, or electronic media channels. Perhaps it is for this season that they decided to stage a more visible protest in Lahore this week, while assuring the government that this was a peaceful demonstration to highlight their demands.

The farmers from the Pakistan Kissan Ittehad and the Pakistan Farmers Board collected at Thokar Niaz Beg in Lahore and marched peacefully to put forward their requests and submissions. These were essentially that sugarcane be purchased at Rs300 per maund and that the price of wheat be fixed keeping in mind its vital use as a food crop in the country and the fact that fewer and fewer farmers are willing to grow it as it is not bringing in profits. The farmers are seeking a price of around Rs2000 per maund for wheat across the country. They also seek a uniform tariff rate for electricity to run tube-wells or if this support price for crops was not possible then a reduction in the prices of fertiliser, pesticide and other items needed to grow crops. Tragically as the farmers put forward their case, the use of teargas, water cannons and batons led to the death of the finance secretary of the Pakistan Kissan Ittehad, Malik Ashfaq Langriyal.

The farmers say Langriyal was critically injured as the police used water cannons on the peaceful farmers; there have also been allegations that the water in the cannons contained chemicals which were toxic and therefore badly harmed the protesters. It is difficult to know the truth, but we do know that Langriyal died in hospital and that the farmers staged another protest outside the Punjab Assembly on Thursday. They have said that if their problems are not solved, and if the government does not discuss the agriculture policy they themselves had worked out, they will march on Islamabad. We do not wish to see more unrest in the country. Farmers are a critical component of society and form the bulk of the working groups in our country. Their rights need to be respected and their problems understood, so that they can continue to provide the vital items we all need.https://www.thenews.com.pk/print/740073-silenced-protests?_ga=2.144866231.289971749.1604897997-1842866265.1599281560