News
Monday, August 08, 2011
Pakistan’s poor dying in Karachi violence
KARACHI: Life stopped for Pakistani cab driver Ghulam Mohammed when his seven-year-old daughter was shot dead on her way home from school, a victim of senseless political and ethnic violence sweeping Karachi.
Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) said, Shumaila was one of 300 people who died in political and ethnically linked shootings in Karachi last month and one of the 800 killed since the start of this year.
Shumaila was Mohammed’s only child, born after 12 years of their wedding. It took two stray bullets to bury all the hopes and dreams they had for the future.
“She was the one who gave meaning to our lives. Now we have no reason to live,” said the tearful 36-year-old, a resident of Qasba Colony, one of a series of troubled neighbourhoods in western Karachi turned into a battlefield.
She was carrying her books when the bullets pierced her abdomen and splintered a rib. She was eventually picked up by an ambulance after medics struggled to access the street under gunfire.
“Someone told me, my daughter had been shot and I rushed to hospital despite all the risks, only to find her dead in the morgue,” Mohammed said.
Many link the killings to rising tensions between the Mohajirs, the Urdu-speaking majority represented by the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), and Pashtun migrants affiliated to the Awami National Party (ANP).
Karachi is Pakistan’s financial capital and with a population of around 18 million, its largest city. But authorities appear powerless to stop the bloodshed, human rights activists said, pointing out that most of the victims are innocent civilians. “People have been killed because of their political affiliations, but it seems most are killed because of their ethnic background. The majority of them are poor and destitute,” Zohra Yusuf, chairwoman of the HRCP, told AFP.
Shumaila was Pashtun. Her father arrived in Karachi from the northwest 20 years ago looking for job and then settled down and got married. Today the northwest is on the frontline of Taliban and al Qaeda-linked bomb attacks and the migrant flow to Karachi is even greater. Shumaila’s bereaved parents live on a congested street in a neighbourhood of Urdu and Pashtun speakers, where trigger-happy gunmen from both sides can quickly reduce the area into a battlefield.
HRCP said Karachi suffers political, ethnic and sectarian “polarisation”. But the government blames vague mafias involved in land grabbing and drug pushing for the killings, and for creating “misunderstandings” among political parties and ethnic hatred.
“It should not be called ethnic violence,” said Sharfuddin Memon, an official in the home ministry of the southern province Sindh.
“The mafias are killing people in such a manner that rival communities and parties are left with the impression of an ethnic war which is not there. The mafias do this to get stronger and weaken the writ of the state.”
The Urdu-speaking family of Anwer Ali 22, said, he was going to job when unidentified gunmen shot him dead. “He was the only bread earner for his mother and two sisters,” said his cousin Mohsin Ali. The family rent a one-room house in a squatter settlement near the area of Katti Pahari, a flashpoint for the most recent violence, and are deeply frightened about the future. Despite the deployment of extra police and paramilitary forces, residents complained that the security personnel did nothing to help. Leaders in the MQM and ANP have blamed each other. “Mafias are involved in the killings, but armed wings of political parties have played a big role in creating the mess,” said Tauseef Ahmed Khan, who teaches mass communications at Urdu University. “The armed wings work to maintain party influence, prevent rival groups from infiltrating their territories and force people to remain loyal,” he said, adding “There are killings on ethnic grounds while most of the victims are poor people who don’t know the reason why they are being killed.” afp
Courtesy www.dailytimes.com.pk