LAHORE, April 7: Sunni Tehrik held a protest rally here on Monday to condemn what it called the Muttahida Qaumi Movement violence against its workers in Karachi.

Tehrik workers gathered outside the Lahore Press Club and marched to Aiwan-i-Iqbal on Egerton Road raising slogans and carrying banners and placards inscribed with slogans calling for restoring peace in Karachi and institution of murder cases against MQM leaders.

Addressing the rally, Punjab Sunni Tehrik Convener Muhammad Shadab criticised the government and major political parties for maintaining a silence over killing of ST workers in Karachi, and urged Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani to order arrest of the culprits nominated in the FIRs.

The Tehrik would lodge a countrywide protest movement if the murderers of its workers were not brought to justice, he warned.

He said the MQM had been given a license to create law and order situation in Karachi by delaying probe into Nishtar Park blast and May 12 massacre and getting false cases registered against ST workers entering the ‘No go' areas. Sunni Tehrik leaders and workers would not remain silent over MQM’s ‘politics of violence’, he said.

Lahore ST Convener Mujahid Abdul Rasool said the Tehrik would present memorandums on the law and order situation in Karachi to the leaders of all political and religious parties and ask them to play their role for restoring peace in the city by liberating it from the clutches of the MQM.