Protesting civil society moves into Qaim’s comfort zone

Karachi
Civil society activists staged a rally outside the Chief Minister’s House on Monday demanding stringent measures against sectarian violence in the wake of yet another terror attack in the shape of a bomb blast inside an imambargah in Shikarpur which left 62 families mourning their dead.
Members of political and civil society organisations had to stage the sit-in at some distance from the Chief Minister’s House because of containers and a heavy contingent of police blocking the entrance.
The protesters shouted slogans against the provincial government and demanded that the flags of Laskhar-e-Jhangvi, a banned sectarian outfit, should be taken off from all public places.
Enraged by the pre-emptive security measures taken for the chief minister, the protesters demanded that the government should ensure similar steps to safeguard the lives of ordinary citizens.
“They took advance measures by blocking all roads leading to the Chief Minister’s House to protect Qaim Ali Shah from innocent citizens paying the price of the policies they silently supported with their lives,” shouted a protester.
Talking to reporters, Zafar Abbas Jaffri, a representative of the Jafaria Disaster Cell, a non-profit welfare organisation, said the government had threatened the families of the people injured in the blast being treated at hospitals in Karachi of stopping medical help if they participated in the protest.
He demanded that the chief minister should come out of his residence and answer the protesters’ queries regarding the intelligence failure.
National Students Federation-Pakistan central organiser Khurram Ali appealed to the participants to question the state’s failure regarding the “strategic depth” policy as well as the continuous intelligence lapses.
He said no number of national action plans would work with the likes of Jamaat-ud-Dawa chief Hafiz Saeed, Ahle- Sunnat Wal Jamaat central leader Aurangzeb Farooqui and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi’s Malik Ishaq cruising around in the protection of the law enforcement agencies. No government official had reached out to the protesters till the filing of this report.