PTI’s Rawalpindi youth convention leads to Aliya, workers’ arrest

RAWALPINDI: Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf’s (PTI) Chief Organiser for Punjab Aliya Hamza and several workers were arrested and shifted to multiple police stations for holding a convention in Rawalpindi.

With the police sources citing a PTI convention sans necessary permission from authorities as the rationale behind the arrests, Hamza along with eight other workers was shifted to the Civil Lines Police Station.

PTI leader Seemabia Tahir, while confirming Hamza’s arrest, has said that the PTI Punjab’s chief organiser was being held at the Women Police Station, and five of the party’s workers had been shifted to the Airport Police Station.

“We had a youth convention in Rawalpindi today from where [Aliya] Hamza was arrested. It is our constitutional right to protest or hold a convention, we have not acted against the law,” Tahir said.

Her statement follows the earlier refusal of Hamza’s arrest as she had previously said that the party leader had gone to rescue the arrested workers leading to her own arrest.

Meanwhile, the PTI workers’ arrest led to a tense situation after a large number of PTI supporters gathered outside the Civil Lines Police Station to protest against the police action.

Sources also say that PTI leader Shamim Aftab was also arrested alongside Hamza and had been moved to the Women Police Station.

The development marks the latest incident in the over a-year-long PTI’s tug-of-war with the authorities with regards to the former ruling party’s bid to hold public gatherings — with the government launching a crackdown against them citing, inter alia, security and permission-related reasons.

The Imran Khan-founded party has time again police, and government action against them blaming them for depriving the party of political space.

On Thursday, Khan’s sisters — Aleema Khan, Noreen Khanum and Uzma Khanum — along with National Assembly Opposition Leader Omar Ayub Khan, Sunni Ittehad Council (SIC) chief Sahibzada Hamid Raza and Punjab Opposition Leader Ahmed Khan Bhachar were detained by the police from a checkpost near the Adiala jail.

The arrests came after the PTI leaders engaged in a verbal altercation with police for not being allowed to meet the PTI founder incarcerated in the Adiala jail.

The altercation came over a week after PTI workers clashed with law enforcers near Rawalpindi’s Adiala jail, with police detaining multiple workers and leaders.