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Life in Karachi paralysed by strike
Police and Rangers are on high alert in the city, consequent to eruption of violence in certain parts of the metropolis on Friday night, according to a DawnNews report. KARACHI: Two people, a young man and a 50-year-old woman, were killed and as many others injured, while a dozen vehicles were set on fire in the small hours of Saturday in different acts of violence, causing a city-wide shutdown later in the day, which the Jeay Sindh Qaumi Mahaz interpreted as the success of its strike call. The JSQM had called for the strike in protest against the influx of internally displaced persons into Sindh from Malakand division. The strike call was supported by the Muttahida Qaumi Movement. The police said that the scattered incidents of violence took place in parts of the city simultaneously after 1am. The Garden police said that a woman was burned to death when a mob set a minibus of route P-1 on fire near Karachi Zoological Gardens. The Garden police said that they arrested six youngsters – Mirza Kamran Baig, Talha, Abdul Hameed, Mohammed Ali, Danish and Allah Rakha – red-handed at the crime-scene and booked them in a case (FIR 320/2009). The body of the victim woman was shifted to the Civil Hospital Karachi, where she was identified as Amna Bibi, wife of Haji Noor, hailing from Jhadu. Her relatives at the hospital told Dawn that the woman, along with her three daughters, had come to Karachi to attend a marriage function and she was staying with her married daughter at Shah Faisal Colony. They said that the victim went to visit some relatives in Agra Taj Colony and she was returning to her daughter’s house in the minibus that was torched. The Sharifabad police said that a 23-year-old man, identified as Majid Ali, son of Wajid Ali, a resident of Gulshan-i-Iqbal, was killed and the husband of his wife’s sister, Nadeem, son of Mohammed Tufail, was wounded when two attackers on a motorbike opened fire on their car at Liaquatabad No 4. The police said that the deceased was a cable operator and he, along with his brother-in-law, was sitting in his car, parked near Welcome Bakery, when he came under attack. The police registered a case (FIR 320/2009) against two unidentified assailants under Sections 302 (intentional murder), 324 (attempt to murder) and 34 (common intention) of the Pakistan Penal Code on the complaint of the wounded victim. The body and the wounded man were shifted to the Abbasi Shaheed hospital, where sources said that the cable operator received two bullets in his upper torso, while his brother-in-law received a single bullet in his arm. Fire brigade sources said that at least 12 vehicles were set on fire in different parts of the city. They said that a tractor was torched in Shah Faisal Colony, a water tanker and a minibus of route F-11 in Korangi, a minibus near Safoora Chowk, a minibus of route W-11 in New Karachi and a Hiace van was torched in Azizabad.
Violence keeps citizens away from work It was virtually the same in major commercial centres of the city, where shopkeepers at both retail and wholesale markets preferred to keep their shutters down. Though the transport operators said they did not support the strike call, they said that the incidents of arson had forced them to keep their vehicles off the roads. ‘We have already lost some 40 vehicles in arson attacks since April 29,’ said Irshad Bukhari, President of the Karachi Transport Ittehad, a body that represents the private sector’s stakeholders in public transport. ‘We were supposed to bring transport on the roads on Saturday but in a span of less than half an hour six buses were set on fire by miscreants, with no reason and provocation.’ Most citizens stayed home, leaving both government and private offices mostly deserted, as even those who wished to come to work were unable to find transportation to do so. The strike also affected the regular examinations of intermediate classes, as hundreds of students faced hardships in reaching their centres, while a moderate number of students failed to do so due to unavailability of buses, taxis or rickshaws. Traders noted that a strike call issued by a nationalist party had never before seen such a reaction from the city, and conjectured that it was the support of the MQM, a major partner in the coalition government, coupled with the scattered incidents of violence which actually led to the shutdown on Saturday. It is worthy of note that wholesale and retail traders say they lose more than a billion rupees on each day of business lost due to strikes. ‘There are some two million people who rely on daily work or labour to earn their livelihood,’ said Ateeq Mir, chairman of the Alliance of Market Associations, an alliance of the city’s nearly 300 market and traders’ associations. ‘Our markets cater to hundreds of thousands of labourers everyday and a large number of such workers reached their respective areas today, but traders were not ready to take the risk.’ Calculations of losses and fear among Karachiities did not impress the JSQM leaders, who believed that ‘the successful strike’ vindicated their stand on Malakand IDPs, which was ‘supported by the people of urban and rural Sindh’. ‘We have taken almost all the parties who want provincial autonomy and believe in provincial rights on board,’ said Aakash Mallah of the JSQM. ‘We appreciate the MQM’s support on our stand and believe that it is the beginning of a new political culture in Sindh, where representatives of urban and rural areas are joining hands for common causes.’ He said the JSQM strongly opposed settlement of Malakand IDPs in any part of Sindh, as the same policy after the Russian invasion into Afghanistan had brought ‘severely negative impacts on the province’s social, economic and cultural fronts’. His views were echoed by Sindh Health Minister Dr Sagheer Ahmed, who is also a member of the MQM’s coordination committee. ‘We have only supported the JSQM’s viewpoint on the IDPs issue, not the strike call,’ he said. ‘We have conveyed our message very loud and clear. There must be a mechanism for the IDPs, which involves their registration, screening and then settlement in camps in the outskirt areas. Otherwise, there are stronger possibilities of Taliban’s influx in the garb of IDPs.’ DAWN Report :Saturday, 23 May, 2009
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