25 September 2004	Saturday	09 Shaban 1425

PESHAWAR, Sept 24: A fact-finding commission of the Peshawar High Court Bar Association on Friday asked the NWFP Governor's Secretariat (Fata) to allow the commission to visit South Waziristan.

Addressing a press conference at the Peshawar Press Club, members of the commission refuted a claim made by the Governor's Secretariat that their report was biased and partial.

Two members of the commission, Mohammad Khursheed Khan and Kareem Mehsud, addressed the press conference. The third member, Wali Khan Afridi, was not present. The members said that there were two types of evidence in their report: one based on statements of lawyers, journalists, displaced persons and elected representatives recorded in Tank district; and the other based on eye-witness accounts of the members themselves.

Mr Khan said that nobody could deny the fact that thousands of people had been displaced from the South Waziristan Agency. "The presence of a large number of displaced persons in Tank, adjacent to the agency, clearly proved that common people were hit hard by continuous shellings and bombings and economic sanctions imposed by the government," he added.

The members said that they had been assigned the responsibility by the general body of the PHCBA on September 14 subsequent to which the commission conducted the inquiry and submitted its report.

They said that they had tried to meet the political agent of the agency, but he declined to see them and did not allow them to go beyond Jhandola. They said that even now they were ready to meet the officers concerned, provided they were allowed to visit the agency along with journalists from Peshawar, Tank and Dera Ismail Khan.

Mr Khan wondered why foreign journalists from Islamabad were taken to the agency on helicopters whereas mediamen from Peshawar and other areas were not permitted to go there.

He said that since journalists from Peshawar could speak Pashto, they were in a better position than the foreign journalists to ascertain the facts. The members stated that relatives of the civilians killed in the military operation were available to verify their report.

They added that they could provide the statements of all the affected people which they had recorded. They said that the relatives of 'all the innocent persons' killed in the September 9 bombing were available 'to nullify the claim of the government'.

Mr Mehsud stated that an 'innocent boy Noorullah is languishing in the district prison in Tank'. "The boy was taking his injured brother to hospital, but his brother died on the way, and he was arrested," he said.

He added that Dr Samar Gul 'who received four bullets from the armymen' was still alive to confirm their report. The members of the commission said they would like to know why was the government not providing humanitarian assistance to the displaced persons in D. I. Khan and Tank and why were camps not being set up for these persons?

"The only reason for not establishing camps is that those camps will become focus of attention of the media, and the false claims of the government about the operations will be exposed before ordinary people," the members of the commission alleged.