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08-01-2021
By SJA Jafri + Bureau Report
ISLAMABAD/ QUETTA/ MACH: The Prime Minister (PM) of Pakistan, Imran Khan announced on Friday that he will not be blackmailed into coming to Quetta and would visit the mourners, including women and children, sitting along with bodies of 11 Shia martyrs in extreme weather (-8 to -10 temperature) conditions near the Western Bypass area close to Hazara Town only when they bury the dead.
The PM was of the view that linking the burial with his prior visit made no sense, adding that no one blackmails a sitting Prime Minister like this anywhere in the world.
“If this condition is accepted then everyone will blackmail the prime minister,” the premier said, adding that a gang of robbers, the opposition parties is also trying to blackmail him for the last two-and-a-half years.
“If you bury the dead today, I assure you that I will visit Quetta today,” PM Imran announced while speaking as a chief guest at the launching ceremony of Special Technology Zones Authority in Islamabad.
The prime minister went on to add that all the demands of the bereaved families and people protesting in Quetta have already been accepted except the condition that they would bury the dead only when PM visits them.
“Do not put a condition that makes no sense,” Imran said.
In his speech, PM Imran once again accused India of spreading chaos in Pakistan, saying he has been saying it since March 2019 that “India is fully involved in spreading chaos” and wants to spread sectarian violence in the country.
He lauded the intelligence agencies for averting four major terrorism attacks since he has informed his cabinet and openly expressed about India’s involvement in terrorism activities in Pakistan.
Armed attackers had slaughtered 11 miners near a mine site in Balochistan’s Machh coalfield area on Sunday. The militant Islamic State group claimed the 
responsibility of the gruesome attack. Since then thousands of Hazaras have been protesting while sitting along with the coffins of their loved ones.
In his speech, PM Imran expressed that Hazara was the most targeted community in the country; he has visited them many times in the past and witnessed their fear, adding that “no community has been oppressed the way the Hazara community has been oppressed over the years.”
Deeming the murder of 11 coalminers brutal, he said, all this is part of the conspiracy hatched by India which has been highlighted many times since March. “It’s a big attempt to spread sectarian divide,” he maintained.
Expressing that the government was aware of the sufferings of the Hazara community, Imran said that he first sent the interior minister and later two other federal ministers to Quetta to tell the protestors that the government was with them and it will provide every kind of compensation as “bread earners” were killed in Machh, Balochistan.
Earlier, PM Imran took to micro-blogging site Twitter to reassure the Hazara families that he was “cognizant of their suffering and their demands” after they refused to end their protest until PM himself visits them and listens to their demands.
However, PM Imran has reiterated that the bereaved families should first bury their loved ones and only then he would visit them. The PTI-led coalition government has been feeling the heat of the Hazara community’s sit-in Quetta and seemed to be thrown on the defensive as it was repeatedly challenged by the opposition over its slow response to the massacre in Machh.
On the other hand, the heirs of the martyrs have already been announced that bodies of their martyred love ones would not be buried till PM Imran’s arrival while hundreds of sit-ins across the country are continued in which millions of mourners are participating.
