ISLAMABAD, Nov 2: The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) on Tuesday demanded an “immediate ceasefire” by the Rangers in Gilgit and an investigation by an independent judicial commission into the “armed violence” persisting in the city since January which has claimed more than 70 lives so far.

HRCP Secretary General Iqbal Haider told a press conference here that the Rangers’ had “unleashed terror” on the city’s population after an attack on a vehicle carrying Shias on Oct 11 triggered a new wave of violence in which at least 18 people have died.

Kamran Arif, an HRCP coordinator active in the area, alleged that the incident snowballed into a bloody confrontation between the Rangers and protesters because of the inept handling of the situation by the Rangers.

Two days after the Oct 11 attack, he said, the Rangers went berserk when someone fired upon them during an argument over the Rangers’ insistence on taking into their custody an assailant who was injured and caught in the attack, he said.

They arrested a ninth class student Haider Ali as the sniper, stripped him naked in public and tortured in custody, he said. The Rangers fired their automatic weapons on a mosque where those protesting Ali’s arrest had taken refuge with such ferocity that a minaret of the mosque fell down. Thirteen citizens were killed that day, he said.

Subsequently, the administration imposed curfew in the city, first for 117 hours continuously and later with daytime breaks.

“The curfew is still continuing and that mosques in the city have been shut down imply the administration’s failure to control the law and order situation there,” said Mr Iqbal Haider.

“It is most condemnable that even one year after being elected in October 2004, the legislative council of the Northern Areas is not functional and has not been able to form a cabinet. The government of Pakistan is taking no interest in correcting the aggravating situation. Even its representative there, the Chief Secretary, has not intervened to save the situation,” he said.

“Such unconcern and discriminatory treatment sends a dangerous message to the patriotic citizens of the Northern Areas as it would promote secessionist forces,” warned Mr Iqbal Haider, also a former law minister.