KARACHI, Dec 23: In a joint demonstration organised on Sunday outside the Karachi Press Club, various civil society organisations condemned the lynching of man accused of blasphemy in Dadu district on Friday, and the assassination of Awami National Party leader Bashir Bilour in Peshawar on Saturday and demanded that a high-level judicial inquiry be held into incidents and the culprits be brought to justice.

A statement distributed at the demonstration also condemned the killing of an injured person inside the emergency ward of the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre by gunmen who believed that the victim had killed their friend.

Referring to the upcoming elections and newspaper reports about preparation of a large number of suicide squads, the statement said that the government should formulate a policy for ensuring the security of the people during the elections.

The statement said that intolerance in the nation was at all-time high the way the police station in Dadu’s Sita village was attacked by a mob which lynched a man and then set his body on fire for allegedly desecrating the Holy Quran, showed that people had lost respect for the law. The proper way to deal with the situation should have been to let the law take its due course and let the courts decide the matter, it added.

Later, the protesters approached the organisers of the Sindh Culture Day programme, being held nearby, and extended their support to their demands. Speaking to the audience, civil society members said that they had expressed solidarity with them and said that Sindh was the land of love, peace and Sufism and did not believe in violence. They said that condemned terrorism, done on any pretext – political, religious, ethnic or sectarian. The demonstration ended with chalting of slogans in support of civil society members by the participants of the culture day programme.

The demonstration was jointly organised by the Aurat Foundation, Joint Action Committee, Women’s Action Forum, Pakistan Medical Association, NOWC, Tahfuz-i-Jamhooriat Committee, Pakistan Workers’ Confederation, Pakistan Hindu Council, Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, Port Workers Federation and a few other organisations.