May 19, 2008	Monday	Jamadi-ul-Awwal 13, 1429

HYDERABAD, May 18: The Pakistan Human Rights Development Organisation has accused a landlord of Umerkot of keeping 16 members of a scheduled caste community in wrongful confinement and appealed to Pir Pagara to order release of the bonded peasants.

At a press conference at the Hyderabad press club here on Sunday, the regional president of the organisation, Mohammad Yousuf Gujjar, said that their organisation had received a complaint from a peasant, Sahoo, about wrongful confinement of 16 peasants and they had verified the facts.

He alleged that a peasant woman, Reshman, and her minor daughter were also tortured to death.

He said that the democratic government, which only believed in cult of personality, was doing nothing at all to protect the poor people. They, therefore, appealed to Pir Pagaro to intervene in the matter and rescue 16 bonded peasant from the wrongful confinement of the landlord.

They warned that if the bonded peasants were not rescued, the activists of the organisation would stage a protest demonstration in Hyderabad and other districts of Sindh on next Sunday.

JSQM MEETING: Following the release of the central general secretary of JSQM, Dr Safdar Sarki, the first meeting of the central committee of the party was held under the chairmanship of Basheer Khan Qureshi at Sunn on Sunday.

Speakign on the occasion, Mr Qureshi said that JSQM represented the national movement and it was striving to maintain the historic identity of Sindh. He said his party would fight all the anti-Sindh conspiracies.

The meeting observed that even today, many Baloch people were being held as hostages by the agencies and many Sindhi youth were languishing in jails for raising their voice for the rights of Sindhi people.

The meeting maintained that army operation in Balochistan continued while resources of Sindh were being controlled by outsiders.

It called upon the Sindhi people to unite on one platform and launch a joint struggle for restoration of rights of Sindh and Sindhis.

Those who attended the meeting included Dr Safdar Sarki, Mohammad Rahimoon, Aakash Mallah and Sagar Hanif Burdi.