QUETTA, 22 July — Some 50 people, including an ex-member of the Senate, were arrested late Friday for stoning vehicles and disrupting traffic during a transport strike here.
Police officials said they rounded up trouble-makers from different parts of the city. Habib Jalib Baloch, a former senator, was among those arrested from the eastern bypass in Satellite Town. The detained persons face charges of damaging public transport vehicles.
An official spokesperson for the Pakhtonkhwa Milli Awami Party, whose student wing was at the forefront of the strike, condemned the arrests saying that policemen in Loralai had arrested dozens of its workers. Still, he pointed out that the authorities could not foil the purpose of the strike — which was staged by students to protest the appointment of an army officer as vice chancellor of the local university.
Supporters of the Balochistan National Party claimed that their strike was a resounding success because the wheel-jam protest was observed in all Baloch areas of southern Balochistan.
Both the BNP and PKMAP claimed that the strike evoked a spontaneous response. Students did not put pressure of any kind on local transporters in this matter, the two parties said in a statement.
The government should withdraw the police from the campus and remove the army officer from the seat of vice chancellor.
Baloch nationalist leader Sardar Ataullah Mengal on Friday expressed solidarity with the striking students. In a telephonic conversation from London, Mengal lambasted local officials and the federal government for taking action against the students. By installing an army officer at the vice chancellor’s post, he said, the government is trying to transform a university into an army camp.
