Quetta attacks: Lawyers boycott court proceedings

They term the incidents as assaults on Pakistan’s sovereignty.

SUKKUR/ KARACHI: Lawyers across Sindh boycotted court duties on Monday to protest against the two attacks on Saturday in Quetta, in which 28 people were killed and the Ziarat Residency was destroyed.

The vice chairperson of Sindh Bar Council, Mohammad Akil, made the announcement for the boycott on Sunday. No legal proceedings took place at the City Courts, Malir district courts and anti-terrorism courts.

While expressing solidarity with the victims’ families, Naeem Qureshi, Karachi Bar Association’s (KBA) president, said the attacks were against humanity and no religion permits anyone to commit such acts. “Muhammad Ali Jinnah was also a lawyer. By this protest, we’ve sent a message to terrorists that lawyers are still with the founder of this country and his ideology.”

The president of the Malir Bar Association (MBA), Muhammad Ashraf Samoo, condemned the incidents and said the country’s lawyers were going to support the people of Balochistan. He added that the attacks were against the country’s sovereignty.

In Sukkur, lawyer boycotted their duties at the high court and lower courts. They gathered at the district and sessions court and organised a protest, during which they shouted slogans against all terrorists and the suspects behind the Quetta attacks.



Speaking at the occasion, the president of the high court bar association, Qurban Malano, and the district bar association’s president, Hadi Bux Bhatt, strongly condemned the killing of students of Bolan Medical College. The killing of innocent students was not only against Islamic values but also against the customs of Sindhis and Balochis, they said.

“We see this cowardly act as inhuman and anti-Pakistan. We demand the government to catch the  culprits,” said Malano.

SHCBA passes a resolution

The Sindh High Court Bar Association also held a general body meeting to condemn the attacks. The body’s president, Mustafa Lakhani, headed the meeting in which a resolution was passed to condemn the attacks.

The resolution states “The bar association strongly condemns the attack on the Ziarat Residency, bomb blasts and the killing of innocent university students as well as people in emergency ward of the Bolan Medical Complex in Quetta. This Bar Association condemns the attack on the Ziarat Residency which is an attack on Pakistan and whoever have committed these brutal acts should be brought to justice.”

In its resolution, the bar association also asked the government to restore the Ziarat Residency and provide sufficient security in and around the national monument.  “We want sufficient security in and around the residency, so that the national monument may once again remind us about the Quaid-e-Azam’s last days at Ziarat.”

Published in The Express Tribune, June 18^th, 2013.