ISLAMABAD, May 16: Chairperson of the Pakistan People’s Party Ms Benazir Bhutto has condemned the use of disproportionate force against innocent youths by the Rangers, who killed several people in Lyari the other day.

In a statement, she said that the Rangers were sent to the troubled area to protect citizens, and not to eliminate innocent youths and a child.

She demanded an inquiry into the killings which, she observed, had devastated the families who could never recover from the tragedy. She said it must be ensured that such killing did not take place again.

Ms Bhutto called upon the judiciary to take suo motu notice of the killings, and demanded immediate halt to the bloodshed.

She said her party was unhappy to see that the people of Karachi had first suffered at the hands of suspected MQM terrorists and now they were being killed by the Rangers. She also called for the formation of an inquiry commission to investigate the May 12 events.

The former premier pledged her party’s continued political support to the lawyers’ ongoing movement, and observed that the movement for the protection of judiciary was expanding into a political one. “Free and fair elections cannot be held if gangsters, thugs and terrorists held cities hostage,” she remarked.

She noted that the terrorists who had come with sticks to beat up the opposition in Islamabad and with guns to kill them in Karachi would never permit fair elections to be held. Therefore, under the banner of the lawyers’ movement, the political parties were all getting together to carry on their struggle for the removal of the present regime and formation of a national government of consensus to hold fair elections and transfer power to people, she added.

Under the present regime, the state authority had collapsed and the country was heading towards anarchy and chaos, she observed, adding that the regime was contributing to civil war by usurping the constitutional rights of freedom of movement and freedom of association with sticks and guns.

Ms Bhutto said that the tribal areas had been parcelled out to the Taliban, whereas Tank and Bannu had been given to religious elements, parts of Islamabad to the Imam of Lal Masjid, Gujrat to Chaudhrys, Attock to the Nazim Šunder and Karachi to the terrorists, suspected of belonging to the MQM. She noted that terrorism had spread throughout the country.

She said that democracy could only be restored when a national government was able to offer protection to the innocent citizens in casting their vote free from the shadows of the thugs and terrorists.

She also condemned the bomb blast in a Peshawar hotel on Tuesday that killed nearly 30 people as ‘a despicable crime against humanity’, and said the regime had miserably failed in checking militants and extremists.

“By previously signing peace treaties with terrorists and extremists in the tribal areas, the regime had emboldened to spread to the settled areas of the country as well,” she remarked, adding that the PPP was alarmed by the spread of violence and terrorism across the country.

She said that extremists and militants had regrouped and grown in strength following rigging in the 2002 general elections.