Demonstration after the cancelling of a seminar (29/12/05)
Daily Times (Lahore), December 29, 2005

ISLAMABAD: A demonstration was held outside a local hotel to protest the hotel administration’s decision to cancel a seminar on Kalabagh Dam arranged by the Action Aid, Pakistan, and Pakistan Fisherfolk Forum (PFF) to hold a seminar on Kalabagh Dam.

Fishermen from the Indus delta in Sindh, water rights activists, people from the Siraiki belt, NWFP and Balochistan, and political activists from across the country attended the demonstration. The hotel administration cited pressure from the authorities as the reason for its decision. The protesters held banners and flags and shouted slogans flaying state repression and the government’s water policy.

Muhammad Ali Shah, the PFF chairperson, said that the people of Sindh and other oppressed people in Pakistan had been resisting the “dictatorial policies of the state for decades and would continue to do so despite efforts to suppress their voices”.

He said that the people of Sindh would never allow the Kalabagh Dam and any other mega water project that denied them their “historic right to the water of the Indus River”. He said that the PFF, Action Aid-Pakistan and other supporters would organise another protest demonstration on Thursday in front of the offices of the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank to demand the withdrawal of funds for the Water Vision 2025.

Taj Haider, the information secretary of the Pakistan People’s Party, said that by refusing to allow a peaceful seminar, the state had proved that it had no tolerance for democratic dissent... He said that the state was unwilling to concede that the rationale for projects such as the Kalabagh Dam and the Greater Thal Canal was “completely nonsensical”.

Dr Qadir Magsi, chairman of the Sindh Taraqqi Pasand Party, said that state functionaries had based their entire case for building mega water projects on “lies and the Sindhi nation has rejected these lies”.