Senators call for making APS inquiry report public

Say families of the martyrs can know no peace until they are provided details

ISLAMABAD:

Lawmakers in the upper house of parliament on Friday demanded that the inquiry reports of the December 2014 Army Public School (APS) attack and other terrorist incidents be made public.

“Why, even after the first anniversary of the fateful incident, there is no judicial inquiry into the incident to determine the reasons behind the APS attack,” said Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) Senator Farhatullah Babar. He was taking part in a debate on an adjournment motion moved by the Muttahida Quami Movement’s (MQM) Senator Tahir Hussain Mashhadi.



Senator Farhatullah urged that the issue of publication of the APS attack inquiry report be referred to the Senate Standing Committee on Defence to make recommendations for a way forward.

He also highlighted the absence of inquiry reports into the killings of journalist Saleem Shahzad and Hayatullah, the Bannu jailbreak, the attack on anchor Hamid Mir, the Kargil debacle and the Osama Bin Laden fiasco of Abbottabad in May 2011.

Babar said the veil of secrecy must be lifted and the APS inquiry report be made public so that the nation could know about its masterminds and the perpetrators as well as ‘what went wrong and where and more importantly how to address the fatal shortcomings’.

“The families of the martyred children in particular and the people in general will continue to twist and turn till they are provided some details and no amount offered in compensation to them will satisfy them,” he said.



Earlier, Senator Mashhadi pointed towards the failure of the federal and provincial governments as well as the police and law enforcing agencies to share any information that could help fix responsibility of the APS incident.

“We have failed miserably to save our children from vultures. Why did this happen and for what reason, who should be blamed and who was responsible? No one is ready to initiate a post-mortem of this heinous incident,” said the MQM senator.

Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid (PML-Q) Senator Mushahid Hussain Sayed also underscored the need for a comprehensive inquiry report.

“In Pakistan’s contemporary history, there are recurring patterns of major events which involve breach of security and loss of lives and which somehow are willingly covered up.

“We have inquiry commissions and reports, but there is no apportioning of responsibility nor an acceptance of the fact that something went seriously wrong,” he said.



He underscored international conspiracy theories that had emerged in the absence of concrete facts of inquiry.  Referring to the May 2015 helicopter tragedy in Naltar, he said there has been no inquiry report circulated or shared with the diplomatic corps, especially for the ambassadors who died in the incident.

“This culture of cover-up has to be exposed and it has to be brought to the notice because we attribute the blame to others, without pinning the responsibility,” he said.

Senator Salahuddin Tirmizi of Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) said inquiry was not just meant for penalising those responsible for terrorist attacks, but also to identify the reasons behind the attack.

“And if making such inquiry reports public harmed the national interest, then they should at least be shared with parliamentarians in an in-camera briefing to make them aware of the forces behind the attacks,” he said.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 2^nd, 2016.