PARACHINAR, Pakistan -- A week-long protest in a northwestern tribal region of Pakistan came to an end on June 30 after army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa agreed to the demands of demonstrators for greater security.
Thousands of protesters -- most of them from Pakistan's Shi'a minority -- have been staging the sit-in demonstration in Parachinar since a twin bombing in a market there on June 23 that killed 75 people.
In a statement, Pakistan’s military spokesman Major-General Asif Ghafoor says Bajwa had met the security demands of the demonstrators.
Sajid Touri, a lawmaker in Pakistan’s National Assembly who represents Parachinar and has been involved in the protests, told RFE/RL's Radio Mashaal on June 30 that the demonstrators are satisfied because Bajwa had accepted all of their demands.
That includes promises to bolster security, greater government compensation for relatives of the bombing victims, and the accountability of military officers and soldiers responsible for firing on protesters.
"We have ended the sit-in demonstration," Touri told Radio Mashaal. "We are satisfied with [Bajwa’s] actions and promises."
Touri said that, even before Bajwa visited Parachinar on June 30 and met with protest leaders, senior army officers in the region had agreed to the demands.
"But our youth insisted that they will end the sit-in after the army chief visited Parachinar," Touri said.
At least three demonstrators were reportedly killed earlier in the week when security forces fired on the crowd in an attempt to force the protesters to disperse.
The demonstrators had demanded that the commander of the paramilitary regiment responsible for firing on the protesters be dismissed.
They also demanded that a new security plan be enforced in the district of the Kurram tribal agency near the border with Afghanistan and that local leaders have some input in the new plan.
Another demand concerned greater compensation payments for the families of those killed in the twin bombing and that local tribesmen be inducted into paramilitary forces that provide security in the district.
