PESHAWAR: Members of Pakistan's Janikhel tribal community said on Thursday they would move their protest demonstration over the killing of four teenage boys from a northwestern town to the federal capital.
The four boys, aged between 13 and 17, had gone out bird hunting when they went missing about three weeks ago. Their bodies were found last Sunday buried in a field by a shepherd grazing his cattle.
Tribal elder Latif Wazir told Arab News the killings had sparked public outrage in the area, prompting people to stage a sit-in near a military check post in the Janikhel area of Bannu Subdivision in Pakistan's Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
Provincial authorities on Wednesday sent transportation minister Malik Shah Mohammad Khan along with local administration officials to negotiate with the tribesmen and request them to end the sit-in which has now gone on for five days. The clan has refused.
Wazir said thousands of Janikhel tribesmen had collected cash donations to arrange about 400 vehicles to move the sit-in to Islamabad on Friday if their main demands were not met by Thursday evening.
The demands include action against an official in the Janikhel area in whose jurisdiction the murders took place, a "ban on a display of arms and compensation for the bereaved families of the slain boys," Wazir said.
Earlier this week, a local daily, Dawn, quoted relatives of the boys as saying that they did not have any personal enmities and the murders showed that authorities were allowing criminals to operate freely.
