LAHORE: The Pakistan Awami Tehrik (PAT) issued on Friday a report about violence, killing and arrest of political workers in the outgoing year 2014.

“It was the worst year as from June 17 to Aug 31 over 25,000 PAT workers faced state violence and were kept in illegal confinement,” the report says.

“At least 4,000 workers had to face unfounded and false cases and thousands of workers faced the worst kind of torture by the state in 12 prisons.”

It said police killed 14 PAT workers in Model Town and injured over 100, while no independent investigation has been conducted into the incident.

The report prepared under the supervision of seven lawyers states PAT workers were imprisoned across Punjab in false cases against them. Due to the lack of space in jails, workers were kept in police mobiles for over 18 hours without any food or medical treatment.

All sorts of measures were taken to stop journalists from reporting police brutalities. “(Their) cameras were broken and false cases were framed against them.”

The report adds 40 false cases were registered against PAT Chairman Dr Tahirul Qadri and the government failed to present challan of the Model Town incident in the court of law.

“The irony is that no progress on the FIR the PAT got registered has been made and to date no investigation has been initiated on its basis.”

Published in Dawn December 13th , 2014