Zardari slams manhandling of farmers

ISLAMABAD: Former president and Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) Co-Chairman Asif Ali Zardari has condemned the manhandling and arrest of farmers in Lahore protesting against rise in pesticide prices and demanded immediate release of all the detained farmers and action against those responsible.
Hundreds of farmers were beaten up, some severely, by police and detained outside the Lahore Press Club on Wednesday for holding peaceful protest demonstration against increasing prices of fertilizers and pesticides and overbilling for agricultural tube wells.
“The farmers have a right to hold peaceful protest demonstration to demand justice and those who manhandled and bundled them into prison vans have transgressed authority and must be brought to book,” said the former president in a statement issued on Thursday.
The former president deplored as ‘criminal’ the continued neglect of the agriculture sector and farmers by the present government that had led to deep sense of frustration among the farming community and steep decline of agriculture in the country.