KARACHI: PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari said on Tuesday that vested interests and oppressors were conspiring to divide Pakistanis in the name of religion to achieve their nefarious objectives but the party would foil the plot through people’s unity.

He was addressing a meeting held in Bilawal House here on Tuesday to observe the national minorities day. His sister Bakhtawar Bhutto Zardari also attended the meeting.

He said that once again some people were talking about the end of the PPP but they must know that the PPP could not be finished because “I have raised its flag.”

He said that earlier also after the death of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto it was said that the PPP had been finished but the perception was proved wrong by his daughter Benazir Bhutto. He said that the party’s enemies wanted to intimidate them by giving them bodies, a reference to assassination of some of its leaders, forgetting that “martyrdom is our heritage”.

Mr Bilawal said that August 11 was declared the national minorities’ day by the PPP government because it believed that whatever one’s religion, he was Pakistani before being anything else.

He recalled Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah’s statement that minorities living in Pakistan were free to practise their religion without any fear.

He said the PPP was the first party which did not discriminate among Pakistanis on basis of religion as its founder Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was opposed to dividing people on the basis of religion.

He said international and local establishment had fixed death sentence for those who dared to talk of people’s rights so that they could continue to achieve their ulterior objectives by dividing people on the basis of religion and nationalities.

Published in Dawn, August 12th, 2015

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