Razed

As bulldozers tore through the informal settlement in the I-11 Sabzi Mandi area in Islamabad on Thursday, its residents unfortunately had no one with them – neither from the media nor from the mainstream political parties. The media, mistakenly, continued to call it the ‘illegal Afghan basti’, all the while depicting women and children as mere instruments in the design of some big land-grabbers. Basic human empathy, something the privileged in our country have a lot of for those in far-away lands, is missing when it comes to the poor of our own cities and towns. Social media was rife with anti-poor sentiment, with people calling them criminals and terrorists. The PML-N government has successfully combined the racism and the class prejudice of our upper classes to stigmatise the mostly Pakhtun residents of the settlement as ‘Afghans’. The apathy of political parties tells another sorry tale. While some ANP leaders had visited the settlement before the demolition, little was seen of them while the demolition was taking place. The less said of the ‘traditionally pro-poor PPP’ the better. The settlements are located in the constituency of the PTI’s Asad Umar. But there was no voice from the self-styled party of the masses. On Friday, when the entire settlement had been demolished, Imran Khan was said to be feeling for the victims enough to ‘oppose’ the operation which did not offer any provision for the affected. This, presumably, is a huge favour to the 8,000 people rendered homeless. We will also imagine that our vote-seeking politicians never made any promises of lease or regularisation to the settlers who had been there for three decades.
The politics of fear was on full display as the police registered a terrorism case against 1,500 residents. The case makes everyone and anyone found in the settlement area and raising their voices liable to be arrested. On Friday, 66 protesters and activists were presented in court and charged under the Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA). They will now be in police custody till August 4. That none of them are ‘terrorists’ is fairly clear, and so is the terror that the state apparatus inflicts on the poor in such cases. At no point during the whole drama have we heard anything about compensation to or relocation anywhere of the residents of this unfortunate colony. As we have noted before, the I-11 settlement had been in existence for over 30 years and should have been regularised by now. But with land speculation becoming the mainstay of the economy, the shanty houses that put a roof on the poor have become fair game now. Will the thousands of residents of the I-11 settlement be allowed to set up camp at D-Chowk like the PTI and Tahirul Qadri were able to do so for four months with similar numbers? What is clear is that the poor have no political party of their own, no voice of their own. They may not even have roofs over their heads if this continues.