The Pashtun Tahafuz Movement (PTM) plans to go ahead with its Loya Jirga grand assembly on October 11 to discuss peace and security in northwestern Pakistan despite recent violence, including the deaths of three of its members.
Thousands of people took part on October 10 in a funeral prayer service for the three peace activists killed when police started firing at them a day earlier after the activists refused to vacate the venue for the Loya Jirga.
Pakistani authorities earlier this week banned the PTM, a popular civil rights movement that campaigns for the country's ethnic Pashtun minority. The PTM has been engaged in "certain activities that are harmful to public order and security," the Interior Ministry said on October 6 in a statement announcing the ban. It provided no details about the alleged activities.
Your browser doesn’t support HTML5
Thousands Attend Funerals Of Pashtun Activists Shot By Police
The PTM on October 10 rejected the accusation of the interior minister that it is trying to "create a parallel or parallel justice" in the country and "create division and differences in the society."
The PTM in recent days reported a series of police raids and arrests targeting its leaders and members ahead of the Loya Jirga to be held in the northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province.
The PTM has campaigned since 2018 for the civil rights of the country’s estimated 35 million ethnic Pashtuns. Many of Pakistan’s ethnic Pashtuns live in areas close to the border with Afghanistan, where the Pakistani military has conducted campaigns that it says defeated the Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan, also known as the Pakistani Taliban or TPP.
The area has recently experienced a surge in militant violence. The TPP has claimed responsibility for much of it.
In the most recent incident, militants opened fire on October 10 on a police vehicle and killed two officers before fleeing the scene, police said. The attack happened in the city of Tank, local police official Sher Afzal said.
Within hours the military said it had killed four militants in North Waziristan, a district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province.
No group has claimed responsibility, but suspicion is likely to fall on the TTP, which is outlawed in Pakistan. The group is separate from but a close ally of the Afghan Taliban.
In other recent violence in the country, two Chinese citizens were killed in a large blast near the airport of Karachi that the Chinese Embassy called a "terrorist attack." The blast was claimed by the separatist Baloch Liberation Army.
The attack took place late on October 6 and it targeted a convoy of Chinese employees of the Port Qasim Electric Power Company Limited that was traveling from the airport, the embassy said. The Chinese citizens were working on the construction of two coal-fired power plants in Pakistan.
The latest violence comes ahead of the summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which will take place in Islamabad on October 15.