10 July 2004	Saturday	21 Jamadi-ul-Awwal 1425

QUETTA, July 9: Members of the Pakhtunkhwa Milli Awami Party on Friday staged demonstration in front of the local press club here to protest against what they called usurpation of land belonging to the Kasi and Bazai tribes in the Samungali, Naswar and Aghbarg areas near the provincial capital.

The demonstrators chanted slogans against the provincial government, MMA ministers and some air force officers. Abdur Rahim Ziaratwal, parliamentary leader of the PMAP in the Balochistan Assembly, party's provincial president Abdur Rauf and tribal elder Malik Aslam Kasi addressed the gathering and demanded return of the land to their owners.

Mr Ziaratwal said that the government and the federal institutions concerned should not bypass legal procedures, adding that if the air force officers needed they should have contacted owners of the land and initiated talks with the tribal leaders as required by the law.

He alleged that in the recent past, officials of the cantonment board had taken over land belonging to the Yasinzai tribe in the Hanna-Urak Valley and the board had also stopped tribesmen's movement in the cantonment area.

Mr Ziaratwal said that during the British rule, the Yasinzai tribesmen had been allowed a passage through the cantonment to their villages in the Hanna Valley. The PMAP leader termed the government's move illegal and unconstitutional.