KARACHI, June 25: A women’s convention organized by the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) here on Saturday unanimously resolved that all discriminatory and unjust laws against women should be scrapped immediately and exploitative practices like karo-kari, honour killing, marriage with Quran, etc., must be stopped.

While deploring discriminatory laws and customs, the convention also demanded that women should be provided with equal opportunities in employment, business, governance, education, health and other sectors so that they could play their due role in national development.

The participants of the convention, first of its kind to be held in the city, rejected religious extremism, fanaticism and terrorism and considered it against raison d’etre of Pakistan.

The convention was organized by the MQM’s women wing at Nishtar Park in which MQM’s supporters from all over Sindh and belonging to different religions and cultural and ethnic groups participated.

Chanting slogans and carrying the party flags and posters of MQM chief Altaf Hussain, women kept on streaming into an over-filled Nishtar Park and surrounding alleys. They expressed resolve to carry forward the agenda of the founder of the MQM which focused on demolition of the age-old exploitative feudal system and emancipation of the country’s 98 per cent down-trodden population whose rights have been usurped by 2 per cent of the rich and the feudal elite.

The resolution, adopted after Mr Altaf Hussain had delivered his speech telephonically, demanded that credit should be given to women for starting small-scale businesses and called for setting up industrial homes for skilled women. The convention demanded setting up of maternity homes and health centres in cities and villages as well as increase in the pension paid to the widows of government employees.

It demanded that prices of essential items should be brought down and that difference in the prices of wheat flour, sugar, milk and other items between Sindh and Punjab must be removed.

The convention deplored the ongoing water shortage and a faulty sewerage system in Karachi and other cities and slammed the city government for its ‘indifferent’ attitude on such matters. It demanded that schedule for the local bodies elections should be announced without delay.

The participants voiced concern over power outages and growing power tariff and demanded that the link between HUBCO and the KESC should be completed as soon as possible.

In his speech, Mr Hussain claimed that the convention was the manifestation of the broad-based support the MQM enjoyed among the followers of various religions and cultures for its struggle for their emancipation and equal rights.

He said Islam recognized equal rights for men and women and criticized those who opposed equal rights for women, but when it suited them they had no objection to it. In this context, he referred to Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal secretary-general Maulana Fazlur Rehman’s role in the then Benazir Bhutto government.

The MQM leader deplored karo-kari, honour killings, marriage with Quran and other such exploitative practices and tribal laws and promised that the MQM would banish these laws together with jahez.

He demanded that women and children languishing in prisons for a long time without trial should be provided justice. He assured the participants that the MQM would strive for bringing the prices of essential items to bearable level.

He declared that the large-scale participation of women in the convention was a clear indication of the party’s overwhelming victory in the upcoming local bodies elections and beyond.

Mr Hussain also demanded that Sindh should be provided its due share through the National Finance Commission award.

He also deplored the killing of Mufti Atiqur Rahman and other religious leaders and alleged that it was part of a conspiracy to create a law and order situation in the city so that the MQM supporters didn’t turn up for the convention.

He alleged that Jamaat-i-Islami chief Qazi Hussain Ahmad, who has reportedly accused the MQM of complicity, had hatched the conspiracy of this murder which he said was executed by the JI activists.

MQM deputy convenor Dr Farooq Sattar described the convention as beginning of the deluge in which all extremists and anti-people forces would be swept away. He called the day as the day to initiate another struggle for the emancipation of women and securing their rights.

Nasreen Jaleel, Anwar Alam, Abdul Haseeb, Khurshid Afsar, Bilqees Mukhtar, Heer Ismail Soho and Farida Baloch also spoke.