Read at 3 different speeds

Pakistan kite festival - 23rd February 2022

In Pakistan, many young people are celebrating an illegal festival. Basant is the Pakistan kite festival to celebrate the windy spring season. But after lots of accidents in 2007, the government made it illegal.

Kite flyers used to have kite battles. They used unsafe materials in their kites to win the battles. This caused injuries and sometimes deaths.

Kite-battle winners would celebrate by shooting guns in the air. Sometimes, the bullets fell and hurt or killed people.

Most of the illegal celebrations happened in Rawalpindi. More than 1,500 officers went from roof to roof trying to stop kite flyers. Waseem Riaz is a senior officer.

Waseem Riaz: "We have deployed our teams equipped with drone technology on three different high-rise buildings. We are using technology and binoculars to identify the points where kite flying, or aerial firing is taking place."

Many kite flyers don't agree that the festival should be illegal. But they think kite battles and gun shooting should stop. Furkan Ahmed agrees.

Furkan Ahmed: "There should be a ban on aerial firing and the chemical strings. It's not in our domain to put a ban on the chemical strings. The government should ban the manufacturing of chemical strings. We are celebrating Basant peacefully, there is no aerial firing and no brawls."

Before it was made illegal, Basant was a family event. It was tradition. Girls used to celebrate by wearing yellow for the festival. Locals who celebrated the event hope that young people can also enjoy the colourful spring festival too.