KARACHI, Feb 3: Muttahida Qaumi Movement chief Altaf Hussain has criticised the ‘so-called’ rights bodies, lawyers’ associations and civil society for what he termed their ‘criminal silence’ on incidents of violence, loot and plunder in Sindh’ after the assassination of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto.

Addressing at a joint meeting of MQM’s Defence Clifton Residents Society, Research and Advisory Council and Muttahida Cultural and Literary Forum, the MQM leader said he did not have words to condemn the double standards of the so-called civil society, human rights organisations which did not utter a single word on the mayhem that followed the Dec 27 tragic incident.

According to an MQM press release issued here on Sunday, he said that 11 people had been burnt alive, houses, shops and factories were torched and people were deprived of their savings in the name of reaction but the silence of the so-called civil society and right bodies on such incidents had unmasked them.

He said it was the duty of the government and its institutions to provide security to the people without any discrimination.