Be it the D-Chowk or the Red Zone of the federal capital Islamabad, these two places are the focus of attention of political parties and the underprivileged sections of society from across the country, because they feel that if they protest at these places, the government will accept their demands.
The reality is that if the government ensures provision of basic human rights and accepts legitimate demand of the people, they will not resort to protest, hold demonstrations and sit-ins. However, it is also true that if the government starts accepting everyone’s demands, the problems will increase instead of being solved, because technically it is not possible for the government to accept the demands of all the people.
Something similar is the situation of Kisan Ittehad protest and sit-in in Islamabad since last week. Farmers’ leaders said on Monday that if their demands are not met today, they will march towards the red zone.
Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah and Islamabad Police are busy controlling the protestors participating in Kisan Ittehad sit-in. A heavy contingent of police was deployed around Khayaban Chowk. Roads leading to the red zone were sealed yesterday.
On Sunday, Chairman Kisan Etihad Khalid Hussain Bath, while talking to the media said: “We hope that the government will accept the demands and the notification will be issued. If the government fails to do so we will shut down the entire country and millions of farmers from across the country will start marching towards Islamabad.”
The important question is that what are the demands of the farmers? Actually, farmers are protesting against high prices of fertilizer and inflated electricity bills. The major demand from the federal government is to reduce the prices of electricity, while the rest of the demands are from the Punjab government.
Kisan Ittehad knows very well that Chairman PTI Imran Khan can use his influence on the Punjab government to get the demands of the farmers to be accepted. Therefore, they have also appealed to Imran Khan to play his role for solving their issue, while at the same time they threatened to stage a sit-in outside Khan’s residence, Banigala, if Punjab government did not accept their demands.
If we keep in mind the background of the flood situation across the country, on the one hand, there is a great loss of lives as more than 1,600 people died and more or less 13,000 were injured. Besides it hundreds of kilometers of roads including 400 bridges were destroyed. Crops standing on millions of acres of land have also been washed away. More than a million cattle heads have also perished.
It should be noted that most of the protesting farmers belong to the flood-affected areas. It is the duty of the government to accept the legitimate demands of these farmers and others flood-affected people, and ensure the provision of basic human rights to all the citizen.
