Immediately after the mob violence in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, the PM announced the return of students who wish to come back as a top priority for the state. Accordingly, Deputy Prime Minister Ishaq Dar announced on Sunday that 540 Pakistani students will be returning via special commercial flights. He further announced “Yesterday, around 130 students reached Pakistan via commercial flights. So today, three commercial/special flights have been arranged. Through these 540 more students will be able to return and the [total] number will increase to 670.” He also informed about the future flights being arranged for more such pupils. The local forces in liaison with the Pakistani embassy in Kyrgyzstan took immediate measure. The mob violence began on Friday night and ended on Saturday.
Deputy PM and foreign minister Ishaq Dar was in conversation with the Kyrgyzstan Foreign minister, “He (Kyrgyz FM) expressed, ‘we highly value you as a brother country’ […] they (opposition) criticise the government policy,” Dar stated. “‘Paid bloggers and paid social media; we don’t know what their agenda is’,” Dar quoted his Kyrgyz counterpart as saying. Further in relation to this, he added, “The foreign minister told me categorically that absolute lies were posted on social media that, God forbid, Pakistani students have been killed. He said ‘I guarantee you that not a single Pakistani student has died’”. It was agreed that both countries would closely monitor the situation multiple times a day at a high level.
Ever since, no further violence has been reported. Instead the sequence of scheduled flights to bring back students from Kyrgyzstan is in motion. In the most recent update, Federal Minister for States and Frontier Regions Engineer Amir Muqam received the students at Islamabad-Airport. He reassured today that these students are “children of the nation” and their safety is therefore a priority.
