KARACHI, June 14: The Sindh Qaumi Ittehad, an alliance of Sindhi nationalist parties, on Wednesday held a protest demonstration outside the Karachi Press Club against the allocation in the new federal budget for Kalabagh Dam project.

A large number activists belonging to the Jeay Sindh Qaumi Mahaz, Sindh Taraqqi Pasand Party, Sindh National Front, Sindh National Party, Jeay Sindh Mahaz and other parties took part in the demo and chanted slogans against anti-Sindh projects.

Carrying banners, placards and flags of their respective parties, the demonstrators, who included women and children, raised slogans against the ‘anti-Sindh’ projects like Kalabagh Dam and Greater Thal Canal, and demanded a halt to the demolition of old Goths in Karachi and action against nationalists all over the country.

They asked the rulers to stop hatching conspiracies against Sindh and refrain from turning the province into a desert by executing the dam plans.

Addressing the protesters, Dr Qadir Magsi of the STPP alleged that the government was bent upon constructing the Kalabagh Dam which was evident from the fresh budgetary allocation for the controversial project. He said that a majority of the people of Sindh, as well as other provinces, had rejected all such anti-Sindh projects but the government, in ignoring all hue and cry in this regard was pursuing the controversial projects which was condemnable.

“Construction of Kalabagh Dam is opposed not only by a few political parties but an overwhelming majority of the people of Sindh, Balochistan, and NWFP, including the Seraeki Belt,” he said, adding that history was witness to the fact that wherever nations were subjugated at the point of bayonet and whenever people’s will was bulldozed, the nations survived but the countries disintegrated.

He said the language being used by the rulers clearly indicated that they were determined to dismember Pakistan.

JSQN Chairman Bashir Khan Qureshi and SNF leader Gul Mohammad Jakhrani also addressed the protesters and vowed to continue their struggle against all anti-Sindh projects.—PPI