KARACHI, April 21: Leaders of the Pakistan People’s Party, Sindh chapter, on Tuesday slammed the government for turning Punjab into a ‘police state’ and ‘no-go area for the PPP activists’ on the occasion of Asif Ali Zardari’s return home from abroad on April 16.

Addressing a news conference at the Karachi Press Club, the party’s provincial information secretary, Dr Fahmida Mirza, narrated the ordeal she and other PPP legislators and activists had been made to undergo in Lahore. “They had crossed all limits of civilized norms and are now constantly telling lies about excesses meted out to PPP cadre, although even today (Thursday) they had put up barricades around Bilawal House in Lahore and are picking up PPP activists,” she claimed.

She alleged that the Punjab government’s action against PPP cadre was the worst kind of state terrorism. “Their conduct is hostile to the people of Pakistan,” Dr Mirza, who was flanked by Waqar Mehdi and H. M. Ghanchi, remarked.

Condemning the indiscriminate arrests and penalising of political activists under the Anti-terrorism Act, she said that the Punjab police was not even declaring the names of a large number of PPP workers arrested and whisked away to unknown places on the occasion of Mr Zardari’s arrival.

She was also asked to justify the PPP’s readiness to hold a dialogue with the Establishment even after being subjected to the alleged state terrorism. She said that PPP had always remained ready for a dialogue with anyone, not only with the Establishment, for the supremacy of the parliament and 1973 constitution.