The school attack on December 16 a year ago in the provincial capital of Khyber-Pakhtukhwa which left 140 children dead was seen by many as the worst in the country’s bloody history of terror attacks.
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With the anniversary of the horrific Peshawar school massacre coming up, Pakistan’s Inter-Services Public Relations department, which is the army’s PR wing, has released a video that sends a message you wouldn’t expect to hear coming from a military force.
Christian leaders and activists in Pakistan have called on the government to declare December 16 a “national day against extremism and terrorism”. To the consternation of some of Pakistan’s European donors the country abandoned an informal moratorium on the death penalty and has so far executed more than 300 death row prisoners.
Earlier, the minister also led a walk at the university premises arranged by teachers and students for expressing solidarity with the martyrs of APS Peshawar.
“All the people of Pakistan are with us and they are trying to support us and helping us to move towards the future and to just forget this incident”, said Muhammad Hamza, 17, a student whose brother died in the attack.
Back in Peshawar, 13-year-old student Uzair Khan told AFP that the Taliban wanted to stop their education so children would stay “ignorant like them”. He said that there was complete unity in the nation to make Pakistan a haven of peace.
Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif attended the memorial ceremony away from the victim families.
Chief of Army Staff General Raheel Sharif, CJSC General Rashid Mehmood, chief ministers of four provinces, chief minister Gilgit Baltistan, Governor KPK and Gilgit Baltistan, PTI chairman Imran Khan, JI chief Sirajul Haq and other leading political and military leaders were also present in the ceremony.
In Peshawar, the area surrounding the school was designated a red zone, and army helicopters hovered as hundreds of soldiers guarded main junctions. The school will also inaugurate a new auditorium and a Martyr’s Monument on its premises. Over 2,000 policemen were deployed at various checkpoints across the city, particularly in the vicinity of the school. After the attack all schools were ordered to rapidly build walls and extra defences.
The army chose to intensify Zarb-e-Azb.
Last week, the army said that 3,400 militants have been killed in the operation.
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But critics have voiced concerns over a failure to tackle the long-term causes of the violence.
