Voicing concern over the disappearance of Muttahida Qaumi Movement’s nine workers and whose whereabouts was not being disclosed, the party’s Coordination Committee deplored that the law-enforcement personnel in their private vehicles were abducting the party’s workers daily.
Till yesterday, residents of Balochistan had been protesting over the disappearance of their near and dear ones but now the same thing had once again begun in Karachi, the Committee added.
This was stated by MQM Coordination Committee Member Haider Abbas Rizvi while speaking at a press conference along with other members of the Committee including Ms Nasreen Jalil, Ms Mumtaz Anwaar, Kunwar Neveed Jamil, Aamir Khan, Aslam Afridi and Wasay Jalil at Khursheed Begum Secretariat, Azizabad here on Wednesday.
He said that the MQM had not come out of the shock it had received in the wake of extra-judicial killing of its worker Ajmal Baig, three more workers of the party were brutally murdered on Wednesday by armed terrorists.
Deploring over such horrible incidents and acts of atrocities being committed on MQM office-bearers and workers, Mr Haider appealed to set up vigilance committees in their localities, keep a vigil on suspicious vehicles and people.
He also urged the people that in case they came across suspicious ctivities they should film the same through their cellular phones and upload them on social media sites or release the same to the media.
Besides, there should be a strict vigil on the vehicles that ply without number plates as well as on personnel in plain clothes so as to expose the elements involved in unconstitutional and unlawful killing of innocent citizens and extra-judicial killings, he added.
It was under a well-planned conspiracy that the office-bearers and workers of the party were continuously being killed and maimed, he said, adding that on the one hand, MQM workers were being targeted and, on the other, they were being killed on sectarian basis.
The Committee said that the grave consequences suffered by the country in the wake of an act of pushing a particular group towards wall were before every one yet the question here arises that why the people at the helm of affairs were not taking measures to bring an end to such nefarious designs.
It demanded of the government to take immediate notice of continuous killings and injuring of MQM’s innocent workers and take concrete measures for the protection of lives and properties of the party workers.
The MQM leader said that on the one hand, the country is entering into a new democratic era and the process of government formation was under way in the federation and provinces and, on the other, acts of barbarism were continuously taking place in the economic hub and the country’s biggest city.
Referring to MQM’s Tuesday’s press conference at which a list of MQM workers who were arrested without warrants from different localities and were not produced before any court of law was presented. Among them, he said, was Unit in charge of MQM’s Burnes Road Sector, who lost breathed his last afte being subjected to severe torture in custody.
He said that the motive of killers and their patrons was the same as they were out to kill MQM workers and indulge in ethnic cleansing of Urdu-speaking people.
Deploring over the extra-judicial killing of Ajmal Baig, he said that according to eye-witnesses the MQM worker was picked up on May 18 by plain clothes and booted personnel from Burnes Road’s Hanfia mosque while he was offering prayers.
Another worker belonging to Unit 5-E of MQM’s Qasba-Aligarh Sector, Faisal Malik, 32, was shot dead by armed motorcyclists on May 28 when he was sitting in his cosmetic shop, he said, adding that the deceased had left behind three daughters and a widow to mourn his death.
In another gory incident occurred on May 28, a worker of Unit 109 of MQM’s Shah Faisal Colony Sector, Yasir Iqbal, son of Iqbal Hussain Shah, was shot dead by armed terrorists when he was sitting in his shop. In addition to this, one more worker of Unit-183 of MQM Nazimabad Sector, Sarfraz Ahmed, s/o Ahmed Mohammad, was killed by armed terrorists near City Foundation School where he had gone to drop his children in his car.
Besides, another worker of Unit 140-A of New Karachi Sector, Syed Salim Ahmed, sustained serious injuries as three bullets pierced into his body when he was targeted by armed men.
The Coordination Committee strongly condemned the acts of terrorism and urged the government to take immediately take stern action against the armed terrorists involved in the killings of MQM workers, besides talking concrete measures for the protection of lives and properties of the party workers.
Earlier, the Coordination Committee offered condolences to the grief-stricken families of its workers – Yasir Iqbal and Sarfraz Ahmed – and prayed to Almighty Allah to rest the departed souls in eternal peace and grant fortitude to the members of the bereaved families.
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