Condemning the Sindh government for ordering the police to use force to disperse their ‘peaceful’ sit-in outside the Chief Minister House, leaders of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan (MQM-P) on Saturday said that the silence of Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, who also heads the National Assembly’s standing committee on human rights, over the matter showed that the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) was behind the use of tear gas and baton charge against women protesters and MQM-P members of the Sindh and National assemblies.
The MQM-P organised a women-only protest at Teen Talwar, Clifton, to show its anger against the police’s brutality and disapprove of the recently passed local government law. A large number of women activists of the party carrying banners and party flags, and chanting slogans against what they termed a black law attended the protest.
Prominent women rights activists, including Aurat Foundation’s Mahnaz Rahman and Tehreek-e-Niswan’s Sheema Kermani, also participated in the protest to express solidarity with the female protesters who were thrashed by the police on Wednesday outside the CM House.Speakers at the Teen Talwar protest called for Sindh Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah, who also holds the portfolio of the provincial home ministry, to immediately resign for using the worst form of state force against the protesters.
“The controversial local government bill was an issue of residents of the entire province and therefore mothers and sisters left their homes to join the MQM-P’s sit-in to record their protest against the legislation in a peaceful manner without committing any violence and blocking the roads,” said MQM-P central leader and senator Faisal Subzwari as he lamented the police attack on peaceful women with sticks and teargas.
“When the women protesters were ending the protest and entering buses and cars, police again attacked their vehicles and smashed their windows,” the senator alleged.He paid tributes to the party’s women workers for bravely facing tear gas and sticks, and “prejudices of the Sindh government and its police”.
The PPP leadership did not allow the people of Karachi to exercise their democratic right and for it, they used non-local police to beat them up, Subzwari remarked. He added that the people of Karachi and other cities of the province had given their verdict against the new local government law.
He maintained that a single peaceful protest of the MQM-P outside the CM House was enough to bewilder the PPP and its Sindh government.
The MQM-P leader was also critical of the agreement between the PPP and Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) regarding changes in the law. “Those who inked the agreement think that their mayors may be elected in Karachi. I challenge them to conduct the elections, and the mayor will be from the MQM-P,” he claimed. He said the MQM-P was the only party whose 51 MPAs in the Sindh Assembly opposed the passage of the disputed local government bill.
