LAHORE, May 17: The Islami Jamiat Talaba (IJT) should be banned because it is involved in “terrorist activities,” demanded Farooq Sattar of the MQM here on Wednesday.

Addressing a press conference, he presented a “white paper” listing alleged atrocities of the IJT on workers of the All Pakistan Muttahida Student Organisation (APSMO).

He said IJT and APSMO had reached an agreement to purge educational institutions of politics in August 2004. The APSMO had dissolved its organisational structure but IJT did not do so and is still involved in violence, he said.

He said this press conference was an attempt to paint true picture of IJT activities in Punjab. The MQM and its student wing had been a victim of malicious propaganda in some parts of the country, and it was an effort to correct the perception, he said.

Mr Sattar denied that by alleging atrocities on the IJT, he was in fact expressing a no-confidence in the Sindh government, which is headed by governor and includes many MQM ministers. He said the provincial government was following law, but he was only trying to dispel an impression that the IJT was a peaceful student organisation.

He said the MQM and APSMO were still ready to appoint a third party or person to sift out facts from fiction and apportion the blame for student violence in Karachi. This offer, he said, had repeatedly been made to IJT but it did not accept it. He said those trying to derive some political mileage out of the Nishtar Park tragedy should be condemned.

The federal government, he said, must take notice of the IJT activities and ban it for poisoning educational institutions in the country.

Commenting on Charter of Democracy signed by the PPP and PML-N, he said the so-called big parties had not included even those small parties that were involved in struggle for democracy.