AWP demands immediate release of its members

Protesters on Saturday demanded the release of the Awami Workers Party’s Ghotki chapter’s secretary-general, Shafqat Malik, and Progressive Youth Alliance’s Muhammad Amin, slamming the culture of enforced disappearances in the country, with the number of abducted activists steadily rising.

In line with the AWP’s call for a countrywide protest against the alleged unlawful detention of its members, the party’s Karachi chapter held a protest outside the Karachi Press Club.

Terming Malik’s detention with his whereabouts unknown an unconstitutional act, the protesters demanded that he and all others forcibly disappeared be released immediately.

The AWP vice president in Sindh, Hasan Ailiya, said Malik was picked up from his house on the night of June 22 by men in plainclothes. He said that it had been close to a month since his disappearance, but his whereabouts remained unknown till this day.

AWP Karachi President Shafi Shaikh said his party believed enforced disappearances were a tool of state oppression and terrorism against its citizens. He said the party had raised its voice against all kinds of oppression since its inception, and would continue to do so.

AWP Karachi General Secretary Khurram Ali said enforced disappearances of Malik from Ghotki and Amin from Karachi had made it clear that firstly, the state does not differentiate between the residents of rural or urban Sindh. “The common citizen will also need to rise above these differences and struggle together on democratic lines,” he said.