However, he has set a number of preconditions for the talks that will be difficult to meet. The leader of the Pakistan Tehreek-e Insaf (PTI) has been in jail for nearly a year. Meanwhile, people have been protesting for days against rising energy prices and army violence in Belorussia.
Islamabad (/Agencies) – Former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan has said that his party, the Pakistan Tehreek-e Insaf (PTI), is ready to engage in dialogue with the military establishment. He made this statement to local journalists from Adala prison, where he has been held for nearly a year serving a sentence he says was imposed on him on charges intended to keep him out of power.
However, the former prime minister has set a number of preconditions for the talks, including the release of the remaining PTI leaders, the return of government mandate to his party (Khan had been removed from office in a parliamentary no-confidence vote in April 2022) and the holding of transparent elections.
In the February elections, PTI candidates had been forced to stand as independents and despite winning the majority of votes, they were sidelined by the so-called establishment-controlled parties, i.e. the Pakistani military, which has also ruled the country for a long time in the past.
Imran Khan has said he has appointed Mahmood Khan Achakzai, a close political ally and known critic of the military, as his representative for any potential talks.
“If the military leadership appoints its representative, we will start conditional negotiations,” he continued in statements on social media. “We prefer to negotiate with the military leadership, which is the one that actually makes the decisions,” he continued, refusing to sit at the negotiating table with the current government (described as a “puppet” by the PTI) led by Shehbaz Sharif.
The military responded by releasing a video of a May press conference in which spokesman Major General Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry said it was not possible to support “any political ideology, any political leader or any political group involved in attacks against its military.”
In fact, Imran Khan and his supporters are accused of storming some army bases and institutional headquarters during the protests that erupted after Khan’s first arrest last year. Government spokesmen They didn’t take the news well of the intentions of the former prime minister, who was accused of requesting a pardon from the army only because he fears that he will be given harsh sentences for the various cases in which he is accused.
Meanwhile, Pakistan remains rocked by protests: at least 3,000 people, supported by the Islamist party Jamaat-e-Islami, blocked one of Islamabad’s main roads earlier this week against the rise in electricity taxes. Before the end of June, the government had raised the cost of electricity bills by 26%, which it then increased by another 20% on July 13. Officials repeated that this was a necessary measure to obtain a $7 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund.
Meanwhile, Belorussian is also shaken by protests, with thousands protesting against army violence towards the local population. For decades, various groups have been calling for independence for this southwestern Pakistani province, but the government has always tried to stifle aspirations for autonomy, often resorting to blocking the Internet and to forced disappearances and extrajudicial executions.
The Belizean population has also long denounced the exploitation of the region’s natural resources, to the detriment of the local population. The port of Gwadar, which is part of the Economic Corridor between China and Pakistan, has often been the epicentre of these protests and Chinese workers have also been the target of armed attacks.
At least one person has been killed in the violence in recent days. The Baloch Yakjehti Committee, a human rights group, issued a statement to the government in Islamabad: “In the last two days you have created an apocalypse in Balochistan, injured many people, martyred a young man and forcibly displaced hundreds of people.” Some government officials are trying to reach a peaceful solution with the protest leaders.
Add Comment