Tribesmen reject reforms body proposals: The News international

Tribesmen reject reforms body proposals
Vow to launch protest movement, demand abolition of FCR

Friday, March 12, 2010
Bureau report

PESHAWAR: Tribal people here Thursday rejected the recommendations of the parliamentary committee for tribal areas and vowed to launch a full-fledged protest movement for introduction of reforms in the area.

The tribesmen under the aegis of Tribal Development Network, a conglomerate of non-governmental organisations working in the tribal areas, students and journalists hailing from Fata staged a protest walk on Thursday to condemn the reforms committee proposals for tribal areas and termed its recommendations as biased.

Started from Speen Jumaat, the walk led by head of the network Nizam Dawar and Provincial Vice-President of Tehrik-e-Insaf Iqbal Afridi culminated at the main gate of the University of Peshawar.

The protestors were holding banners and placards inscribed with slogans against the parliamentary committee. They also called for abolition of the Frontier Crimes Regulation (FCR).

The parliamentary committee for reforms to the FCR had suggested that owing to the prevailing restlessness in the tribal areas, amendments should not be made in the FCR and reforms not be introduced in tribal areas.

Addressing the participants of the walk, Nizam Dawar rejected the recommendations of the parliamentary committee and demanded abolition of the FCR. He said that constitutional and other reforms should be introduced in the tribal areas like other parts of the country. He said when the committee was formed, people of the tribal areas were happy that it would introduce reforms in accordance with the aspirations and needs of the people living there. But the committee’s recommendations had sent a wave of despair among the tribal people.

The tribesmen said they would organise a seminar in the provincial metropolis against the committee and its proposals. They would also launch a ‘long march’ from Peshawar to Islamabad and hold a protest in the federal capital, they added.