RAWALPINDI, Jan 24 : More than 200 activists of Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal (MMA) Friday held a protest demonstration against nomination of some JI leaders in a firing case by the Karachi police in which some MQM activists were killed.

The demonstration started at 3.25 pm from the divisional office of the Jamaat and culminated on Murree Road, where the MMA leaders addressed the participants.

The protesters were holding banners and placards inscribed with slogans against the government’s pro-MQM role in Karachi and asked Prime Minister Mir Zafarullah Jamali and President Pervez Musharraf not to disturb the harmony and peace of Karachi by supporting sectarian factions there.

They urged the government to withdraw “false cases” against their leaders and said they won’t surrender to the unjust pressure of the military government to retreat from their stand.

Speaking to the participants, MMA’s MPA from Rawalpindi Fayaz-ul-Hasan Chohan said the JI’s central general secretary Sayyed Munawar Hassan and Amir Karachi, Miraj-ul-Huda Siddiqui, had falsely been implicated by the MQM in the murder case with the backing of the government. He said the arrest of the Nazim JI, Karachi, showed the government wanted to suppress the growing popularity of the MMA in the province.

He warned President Musharraf against following the path of his predecessor, the late general Zia-ul-Haq, who had fuelled up sectarian sentiments to strengthen his hold on the country.

He said the government had bestowed top slots on those, who had either been defaulters or were involved in criminal cases just to gain their support for the military-controlled democracy. He further said it had been the history of the military dictators that they played one political party against the other to weaken the roots of democracy in the country.

A large number of policemen were also present on the occasion to deal with any emergency. JI Rawalpindi Amir Dr Mohammad Kamal said the MMA leadership believed in peace and democracy. He said it was unbearable for them to see their leaders being harassed by government after implicating them in false cases.

He also linked the harassment of the MMA leaders by the government to the special instructions of the US policy-makers adding the latter did not want to see Islamic-minded people to run the affairs of Pakistan. He asked the government to stop following the US diktat.