PESHAWAR, July 7: The Awami National Party has demanded of the government to get state lands occupied by various seminaries and mosques in Islamabad vacated. In a statement issued here on Saturday by its additional secretary-general, Haji Mohammad Adeel, the party blamed successive governments for the crime, saying the authorities had condoned the forcible occupation of state lands by clerics.

He said the government should demolish all unauthorised structures, except libraries and hostels, constructed by the so-called champions of morality in the federal capital.

He claimed that successive military rulers had encouraged and supported these clerics against the democratic forces, allowing the growth of fanaticism and intolerance in the country.

He said the so-called guardians of religion had erected bungalows, markets, mosques and seminaries on state lands, adding that some of them had even constructed mausoleums on government property to run their lucrative business.

These elements, he said, had turned the places of worship into dens of criminals. He said that mosques and seminaries had been turned into armouries, adding that all military rulers had exploited these clerics to advance their political interests.

He said Gen Ziaul Haq’s regime had allowed parallel militias to flourish during the 10-year Afghan war. He said now the same fighters, who had accumulated uncounted dollars and guns, had become a permanent threat for their old masters.

Referring to the ongoing Lal Masjid encounter, he said that the ‘thriller’ was the logical result of the fanaticism encouraged and promoted by the state managers in the past. Condemning the use of children and girls studying in seminary as human shields by the cleric hiding in the mosque, he urged the government to seek the help of the Wafaqul Madaris for the recovery of children and elderly women detained in the mosque.

He said the seminary students directly confronting soldiers were portraying the wrong image of Islam in the West.