March 08, 2008	Saturday	Safar 29, 1429

KARACHI, March 7: A large number of Muttahida Qaumi Movement’s workers and

sympathisers including women on Friday staged a protest demonstration in front of the Karachi Press Club against the manhandling of MQM’s parliamentary leader in the Azad Kashmir legislative assembly.

On Thursday, some treasury members in the legislative assembly of Azad Jammu and Kashmir had roughed up an MQM lawmaker, Mohammad Tahir Khokhar, when he sought the permission of the speaker to read out his call-attention notice seeking a discussion on “frequent foreign tours of Prime Minister Sardar Attique Ahmed Khan and his family members.”

Carrying tri-coloured party flags and holding placards, the protesting MQM supporters called for an immediate action against those who had manhandled Mr Khokhar. They also urged termination of the membership of those involved in this act against the MQM legislator.

The deputy convener of the MQM coordination committee, Dr Farooq Sattar, Anwar Alam and other leaders addressed the demonstrators which continued for about two hours.

Condemning the attack on Mr Khokhar, Dr Sattar said that those who had attacked Mr Khokhar were afraid of Muttahida’s growing popularity in Kashmir.

He termed it an unfortunate incident and said that it had occurred due to the fact that the representatives of the Muslim Conference were finding it difficult to accept the existence of MQM’s legislators in the AJK assembly.

The Muttahida leader urged the prime minister of the AJK, Sardar Attique, to apologise for the occurrence of the “shameful incident”.

Later, the protesters dispersed peacefully.