Ex-Pak PM Imran Khan Calls This Year's Eid "Most Painful" For Him

Wishing Pakistanis "Eid Mubarak," former Prime Minister Imran Khan said "this is the most painful Eid" for him as around 10,000 PTI workers, and supporters are jailed and are being treated as criminals for exercising their constitutional right to protest peacefully.

The festival of sacrifice was celebrated across the country on Thursday.

"Eid Mubarak to my Pakistanis. This is the most painful Eid for me. Around 10,000 of our workers and supporters are jailed and being treated as criminals for exercising their constitutional right to protest peacefully," Imran Khan said in a tweet on Thursday.

The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Chief further said that: "Our brave leaders including women leaders, Dr Yasmin Rashid and Aliya Hamza are in jail and refusing to leave PTI. 16 of our workers were shot dead and 8 others are suspected to have been killed but cannot be confirmed because relatives have gone underground because of the fear of police. 50 others suffered bullet wounds."

He said there has been no mention of the use of this excessive force by security forces on unarmed protesters and there has been no independent investigation to ascertain what really happened on May 9. "Instead, by peddling a one-sided anti-PTI official narrative, a reign of terror has been unleashed on anyone associated with the party with only one aim to dismantle it before elections," he said.

"PTI and the nation will come out of this dark phase much stronger. Also, there's been a total clampdown on media with all those critical of this fascist government facing its wrath," the PTI chief said.

He added that Pakistani journalist, "Imran Riaz Khan has been abducted and his whereabouts unknown for over 40 days now, and five of our respected journalists who have had to flee the country, we remember them too on this Eid."

Recently, Imran Khan said the Shehbaz Sharif government has made the country irrelevant internationally and its democracy, rule of law and the entire economic and institutional structure were collapsing.

The PTI chief was referring to the India-US joint statement, which labelled Pakistan as a promoter of cross-border terrorism in India.

The statement said the US and India stand together to counter global terrorism and unequivocally condemn terrorism and violent extremism in all its forms and manifestations. US President Joe Biden and Prime Minister Narendra Modi reiterated the call for concerted action against all UN-listed terrorist groups including Al-Qa'ida, ISIS/Daesh, Lashkar e-Tayyiba (LeT), Jaish-e- Mohammad (JeM), and Hizb-ul-Mujhahideen.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)