Demanding justice: Slain ASWJ leaders laid to rest amid protests

Protesters blocked Korangi Road causing a massive traffic jam at the busy thoroughfare.

KARACHI: The funeral prayers of the Ahle Sunnat Wal Jamaat (ASWJ) activists were held on Monday at the Korangi Road, following a three-hour-long sit-in that caused a massive traffic jam at the busy thoroughfare and its connecting roads. 

Altaf Aziz, the head of ASWJ’s Mehmoodabad sector, the sector’s information secretary, Qari Ibrahim and its secretary general, Mohammad Tayyab, were shot dead a day before in an incident of target killing near Vita Chowrangi. The ASWJ spokesperson said that the deceased, as well as another activist, Abdul Qadir, who was injured in the incident, were returning home after paying a visit to the ailing ASWJ leader Maulana Aurangzeb Farooqui.

Before the prayers, several hundred activists of the organisation gathered for a sit-in at the Axact Chowrangi, blocking the Korangi road for commuters. The protesters shouted slogans against the Pakistan Peoples Party government for its “failure to maintain the law and order situation,” while the frustrated drivers, stuck in the snarl-up, criticised the mismanagement of the law enforcement agencies for their failure to control the situation.

A police contingent in riot gear was present near the protest site while a few traffic police personnel, with the help of volunteers, attempted to divert the vehicles through alternative routes. Maulana Farooqui who led the prayers, demanded that the government provide protection to ASWJ members and arrest the killers. “Chief minister Syed Qaim Ali Shah should step down if he cannot give peace to the residents of Karachi and food and water to the famine-hit population of Tharparkar,” said Maulana Farooqui. “The political and sectarian killers have even snatched the right to live from the common man.”

Published in The Express Tribune, March 11^th, 2014.