Imran says he will show how to achieve ‘real freedom’ on 13th

PTI Chairman Imran Khan has said that he will hold a rally and celebrate Pakistan's “real freedom” on August 13 at the hockey stadium in Lahore and tell the nation how to achieve it.

“When there is no justice in the country, the powerful [PML-N Quaid Nawaz Sharif] who stole billions of rupees escapes with NRO and the poor remain in jail for years,” Imran, who is also the former prime minister, said while addressing the convention of the minority community here on Thursday.

“Religion is the only cause of hatred in the whole world as people target each other on religious grounds,” the PTI chief said, giving the example of America where “four Muslims were killed in New Mexico just because they were Muslims”. “This is called Islamophobia and it is the problem of the whole world.”

He said, “In the state of Madinah, Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) signed an agreement (Mistaq Madinah), under which all human beings were allowed to live there equally.”

He said that in Pakistan, especially in Sindh, non-Muslim girls are forcibly converted to Islam. “Know that whenever a Muslim forcibly converts someone to Islam, he is actually opposing his own religion because God has said in the Quran that “in religion, there is no coercion”.

About justice, Imran said that justice means that both the weak and the powerful are equal before the law. “If there is no justice in a society, that society cannot develop. There is no justice in the animal society … the powerful rule, but there is justice in human society and justice means implementing human rights.”

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He said that there was a certain group that dominated the country and when “it steals, it asks for an NRO and gets the theft of billions of rupees forgiven, while a poor man who steals a little gets jailed for many years”.

The PTI chairman condemned the arrest of the news director of a private channel, saying that the police entered the house of a news editor at 2am and took him away, took the wife of Shahbaz Gill's driver and did not even think what will happen to her 10-month-old daughter.

The former prime minister said regarding the Pakistan Movement that when Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah started his politics, he was considered as the ambassador of peace between Hindus and Muslims, but then slowly Quaid-i-Azam realised that some people in the Congress only wanted the freedom of Hindus.

“When Quaid-e-Azam came to know the intention of the Congress leaders, he was afraid that in this way the Muslims would get out of the slavery of the British and go into the slavery of the Hindus.

“Quaid-i-Azam considered all the minorities as equal citizens in the independent state of Pakistan. If Quaid-i-Azam in India had realised that we would be equal citizens, he would have been a part of the Congress in the beginning, he would not have demanded a separate state.”

In the end, Chairman PTI assured the minority community that “we will protect the rights of the minorities in Pakistan, as we are the protectors of the rights of the minority community”.