Islamabad, June 25: The Awami Workers Party held protests, in Sindh, Punjab and Pakhtunkhwa on Wednesday against the US-backed Israeli genocide of the Palestinian people in Gaza as well as airstrikes in Iran.
Scores of progressive political workers, students, intellectuals, trade unionists, katchi abadi residents and ordinary citizens joined the protest at the respective press clubs, warning that the US-backed Zionist regime threatens to spark WW-III.
The protests were held on the call of the Awami Workers Party (AWP).
The protesters also criticised the complicity of Jordan, UAE, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and demanded that the Pakistani state clearly renounce its support to the US imperialist wars while calling for a complete overhaul of the now completely discredited so-called ‘rules-based liberal order’.
A protest was held outside National Press Club Islamabad where speakers condemned the genocide of the Palestinians in Gaza and killings in Iran by the imperialist outpost in the Middle East.
Speaking on the occasion, Aasim Sajjad said that while the ‘ceasefire’ announced on Tuesday between Iran and Israel meant that a regional and potentially global conflagration had been avoided for now, the Zionist terror in Gaza continues unabated, alongside regular strikes on the Houthis of Yemen, against Hezbollah in Lebanon and all other anti-imperialist forces in the Muslim world.
He said that the ridiculous notion that Iran was attacked to prevent it from making a nuclear bomb is hypocritical and is an attempt to disguise the fact that imperialist wars in the Middle East in Iraq, Syria, Libya and beyond have been about ‘regime change’ that has led only to civil strife, hateful division and endless violence.
He also condemned the way in which the US and its Zionist outpost deploy the language of ‘counter-terrorism’ to justify mass killing, a tactic that has now been adopted by Muslim rulers from Egypt to Pakistan to quell internal dissent and buttress their own militaristic designs.
Zoya Rehman said that the unipolar world is dead, and that the world’s people have clearly stood against the genocide in Gaza that has been ongoing for almost 2 years.
In Iran’s case the IAEA has also proven to be a puppet of US and Zionist expansion. It is time, she said, to totally shift from the war-making, neoliberal capitalism and the ecocide so that long colonised peoples like the Palestinians are finally given their due.
She also demanded an end to the ongoing brutalisation of the Baloch people in Pakistan, the siege of Kurram (Parachinar), and the unaccountable drone strikes and rapid militarisation of Pakhtunkhwa.
Other speakers said that we support the right of countries like Iran to defend themselves in the future if they are once against targeted by US-Zionist aggression.
They also demanded complete clarity about the Pakistani state’s positions on imperialist wars in the Middle East and the wider region. The Pakistani people, particularly in Pakhtunkhwa, have borne the brunt of the 20-year imperialist occupation of Afghanistan, and continue to do so today with the nebulous reemergence of religious militants that is related to the Pakistani state’s long patronage of the Afghan Taliban.
The AWP leaders demanded that the current government revoke its outrageous proposal for Donald Trump to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. The Pakistani people firmly oppose the US-Israel nexus in the Middle East, as well as our region, and the AWP appeals to all progressive forces to forge a mass anti-imperialist politics that can articulate solidarity with Iranians and Palestinians as well as oppressed peoples within Pakistan that continue to bear the brunt of wars, occupation and structural violence
Similar protests were also held in different cities in Sindh and Pakhtunkhwa including Karachi, Hyderabad, Mirpurkhas, Ghotki, Nawabshah, Larkana, Shahdadkot, Naseerabad, Daur, Gilgit-Baltistan, and Mardan.
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