LAHORE: The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan said on Saturday that the elements responsible for the Karachi situation could only prevent further loss of human lives and destruction of property there.
In its report “Karachi: Unholy alliance for mayhem”, the HRCP said that all the main political parties were responsible for the people being massacred in the city. Even the political parties that had not assigned armed wings to pull the trigger had a lot to answer for, it added.Releasing the report of its fact-finding mission at a press conference, HRCP Chairperson Zohra Yousaf said an operation by Rangers was not a long-term solution to the situation in Karachi.
She said that the members of the fact-finding mission visited various areas of Karachi affected by violence from July 29 to 31 and held meetings with representatives of a cross-section of society.
She said several volunteers carried out surveys in the violence-affected localities before the mission's arrival in Karachi and the process of gathering information and checking on facts continued for many days after July 31.
HRCP Secretary-General I.A. Rehman told journalists that the demography of Karachi had been changing since 1947. The Muttahida Qaumi Movement had monopoly over the city in the 1980s and 1990s. It was still the major political force there as it had some 16 MNAs. A good number of people from the Pashtun and Punjab areas have been migrating to Karachi and after a decade or so the demographical situation would lead to an altogether different political scenario there.
“Instead of attempting to stop demographical changes in Karachi with force, holding of fair elections is the long-term solution. Our economy cannot bear for a long period the consequences of lawlessness in the city,” he said.
HRCP's former chairperson Dr Mehdi Hasan said that changes in Karachi should be only through political process with the government having effective control there.
The report said: “There are no two views that the state has miserably and utterly failed in its responsibility to safeguard the people's right to life. The fact that Karachi is in a state of turmoil should not surprise anyone. More than two decades of myopic state policies were bound to end in disaster. All stakeholders in the city are in agreement that despite the horrific bloodshed in recent months the potential for chaos in Karachi is infinitely more, thanks in no small part to well-armed cadre of the main political parties and the huge political and economic stakes involved.
“The main political parties in Karachi point to each other's role in instigating violence and patronising criminals and highlight the number of members of their own ethic community or party killed. All are reluctant to acknowledge any role of their activists or militant wings in killing others, and generally state that members of their community (but not party members) may be retaliating against violence by other parties and ethnic communities. The main political actors in Karachi acknowledge that peace can only be restored with a joint approach, yet there is little evidence of efforts to devise such an approach.”
INFLUX: According to the report, Karachi continues to attract migrants, mainly from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and South Punjab and the MQM feared losing the battle of numbers to its political rivals. ANP's dreams of increasing its seats in the national or Sindh assemblies, provided that elections were free and fair, could not but cause concern in the MQM camp which would like its present electoral status to remain unchanged. “This would be Karachi's main fault-line.”
The report said intellectuals described May 12, 2007, as a turning point in the context of violence in Karachi when another ethnic group (Pashtuns) asserted itself and a turf war started between the MQM and ANP.
“Since 2002, political power and state machinery have been used to grab land. While gangs of land-grabbers and mafias have tried to exploit the breakdown of law and order, they do not appear to be the main directors of the horrible game of death and destruction; that distinction belongs to more powerful political groups and it is they who hold the key to peace.
DEWEAPONISATION: “Even issues that everyone acknowledges as crucial have not been addressed, such as deweaponisation, because of different interpretations of deweaponisation. There is no reason why an all-party campaign to recover weapons, including the licensed ones, cannot be launched immediately.”
“However, Karachi is a deeply fractured city now, in the grip of a multi-sided wave of political, linguistic or ethnic and sectarian polarisation. Nothing epitomises the divisions better than the fact that even the injured and dying victims of violence are taken only to hospitals seen to be sympathetic towards one's ethnicity.
“Law-enforcement agencies are inefficient, ill-prepared, poorly resourced, and lack the political support to be effective.”
The report said overpopulation, uneven, ill-planned and poorly implemented development and turf wars had compounded the law and order problems. Organised land grabbing had also resulted in high rents, with the poor being pushed to the margins of society. There had been 'ghettoisation' of large parts of the city and the official watchdogs had been serving the interest of commercial builders and developers. “Low-cost housing has not been promoted, even though the greater part of population increase in the city is of the poor.”
It said the glaring problems of employment, housing, transport, education, healthcare and supply of water, electricity and gas continues to aggravate amid apathy from the government.
“The government has completely failed to ensure safety of life or property, or provide justice or compensation to the affected families. Families narrate harrowing accounts of killing and torture of family members, and arson attacks on shops and other property. Even when cases are lodged with the police and some arrests made, families do not see the judicial process moving forward.
EXTORTION: “From small to medium and large, all businesses are subject to extortion. The extortionists are believed to have links with all political groups present in Karachi and operate in areas where these political groups exercise greater control. Much of the violence is linked to disputes over who collects from which area. Businessmen feel that police operate under political pressure and patronage.
“Infrastructure in Karachi has deteriorated, including electricity and gas supply, water availability, quality of roads and transport systems and garbage collection. This has generated frequent public protests, strikes and affected commercial activity and industrial output.”
RECOMMENDATIONS: The fact-finding mission recommended that the government must now reform its ways, speak with one voice and only make promises that it intends to keep.
It said: Law-enforcement agencies should be given political support and adequate resources to be effective. The police department should be depoliticised and given the confidence that they would not be signing their death warrants by acting against criminals.• The people who suffered losses in the bloodshed in Karachi must be given appropriate compensation without exception.
• Outsourcing of policing responsibilities to the community or different parties in different parts of Karachi must end forthwith. Karachi is in its present state of woe in large part because the state either looked the other way or facilitated political parties as they formed and armed militant wings, which are in essence private militias. All such militias must be disbanded.
• Karachi must be purged of all weapons, both licensed and otherwise.
• The state land grabbed by the encroachers should be recovered. Low-cost incremental housing (in the style of Khuda Ki Basti) should be developed on the recovered land.
• No-go areas established by different political parties in Karachi should be cleared and barriers should be removed permanently.
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