PESHAWAR, Nov 14: The Pakistan People’s Party has decided to formally launch a campaign against the military regime across the NWFP from Thursday and condemned the ‘inhuman treatment’ meted out to its party leaders and workers in Punjab by the authorities concerned.

Addressing party workers late on Tuesday night, PPP former provincial president Barrister Masood Kausar said that military rulers had turned the country into a police state and criticised the imposition of the state of emergency, ban on political activities and a countrywide crackdown on lawyers, activists and journalists.

“Democracy is politics for us, but it does not suit to intolerant rulers and their corrupt political allies,” he said.

He said the party leadership had decided not to hold talks with the rulers, adding that the PPP would now organise demonstrations across the country. He warned that the government would face the wrath of people if it continued to use brute force.

He claimed that the PPP had fully supported the lawyers’ struggle for the restoration of the Supreme Court judges, 1973 Constitution and unconditional release of all lawyers and political activists.

In the past, he said, military dictators had systematically destroyed genuine political forces, leaving their collaborators to run the country without danger of political resistance from any quarter.

He said that every dictator who considered the PPP a threat to the unconstitutional rule had launched a ‘fake PPP faction’ to hoodwink the people, but every breakaway PPP group disappeared with the departure of dictators. He said the PPP was a genuine and true political force that had survived three military dictators and was now fighting a fourth one.

He alleged that the Punjab government had arrested a large number of PPP workers throughout the province to sabotage the party’s long march. He complained of maltreatment of women party workers by the Punjab police.

He called upon the PPP district-level organisations to mobilise people and organise public meetings, rallies and demonstrations in their respective areas from Thursday.

Tribal Chambers of Commerce and Industry president Akbar Khan, Syed Ayub Shah and Khwaja Yawar Naseer were present on the occasion.