Over 100 saplings planted to show solidarity with Lahore blast victims

Voice of Karachi honourary secretary says lighting candles will yield no result

KARACHI: In order to show solidarity with the 72 people who lost their lives in the blast that took place in Lahore’s crowded Gulshan-e-Iqbal Park on Sunday evening, members of civil society, law enforcement agencies and academia and people from almost all walks of life in Karachi thronged the Frere Hall on Tuesday evening to plant as many as 110 trees.

Armed with small neem trees and water cans, several young students were planting the trees. The event was organised by a non-governmental organisation, Voice of Karachi (VoK).





The honourary secretary of VoK told The Express Tribune that people usually lit candles to commemorate victims of terrorist attacks. The candles, according to him, extinguish and yield no result. That was why, he said, they decided to do something that lasts forever and came up with the idea of planting trees.

Another senior committee member of the VoK team, Malik Tufail, said they had arranged the event for the martyrs of the Lahore attack. He maintained that this act of planting trees will also help control pollution and the heatwave that is most likely to hit Karachi in the following months.

The president of the National Forum for Environment and Health (NFEH), Naeem Qureshi, was of the opinion that candle vigils are an imported and adopted technique to show solidarity with the victims of any sort of incident. He said they wanted to do something that could have a sustainable benefit for the society and, due to the upcoming heatwave, tree plantation was the best thing they could do.

According to him, the trees planted will be looked after by the NFEH and the management of the Frere Hall.



Citizens-Police Liaison Committee chief Muhammad Zubair Habib, who had also come to plant the trees, said that carrying out such activities was a token of support in the hour of need.



Civil Aviation School and College’s coordinator, Sarah Donald, who was also present at the event, said that she was very upset sitting at her home as she could not do anything about the people who had lost their lives. “I took off all my Facebook pictures,” she said, adding that it was their [Christian community’s] festive occasion when the blast took place.

The principal of Nasra Public School, Tubinaz, said that she came to know about the event through social media and came since she could not just sit at home.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 30^th,  2016.