MPAs demand state funeral for slain journalist

Punjab Assembly’s treasury and opposition benches were on one page on Monday in demanding state funeral for a journalist who had been shot dead abroad and raising the question why people were not feeling safe in their own country.

 As the session started, Parliamentary Affairs Minister Muhammad Basharat Raja proposed to put off the government business on the agenda for paying tribute to Arshad Sharif.

 The PTI and PML-N lawmakers, expressing their gloom over the killing of Sharif, demanded that the government give him state funeral and hold a fair inquiry into his death.

 They wondered whether the institutions had failed to protecting the people, where the onus of the failure lay, why people were afraid while living in their own country, why they had to leave the country, why they were not safe and why grudge was nursed against them.

 PTI’s Syed Yawar Bukhari said it was targeted killing.

 PML-N’s Iqbal Gujar, Khalil Tahir Sindhu and others seconded the stance of the PTI lawmakers.

 PTI’s lawmaker Samsam Bukhari asked why only Arshad Sharif’s family had taken the responsibility of receiving the dead bodies.

 He said actually the journalism and the true voice have been murdered.

 The atmosphere turned heated for a short while when PML-N’s Rana Mashhood questioned a bar on his party's 18 lawmakers attending the session.

 He said the matter should be first discussed in the business advisory committee.

 Speaker Sibtain Khan had banned the lawmakers' attendance a day earlier over their misconduct on October 22 when former chief minister Sardar Usman Buzdar was presenting a resolution against the Election Commission of Pakistan's decision to disqualify former prime minister Imran Khan.