PHOTO: EXPRESS
KARACHI: The provincial government has pushed Sindh back by 50 years, claimed Sindh Writers and Thinkers Forum (SWTF) leader Noor Ahmed Memon.
Journalists, writers, poets, members of civil society and politicians gathered outside Karachi Press Club in a protest organised by the SWTF on Monday, condemning Saturday's attack on members of the media by the police outside the Sindh High Court. They held placards and shouted slogans denouncing Pakistan Peoples Party co-chairperson Asif Ali Zardari.
"The people of Sindh are suffering due to bad governance," said Memon, announcing that all the writers, poets and journalists associated with the SWTF will expose the corruption of the provincial government through their work.
"There is no writ of the law in Sindh," alleged SWTF's Muzaffar Chandio, adding that the law enforcement agencies had no right to torture anyone. "The government has no respect for ordinary citizens. There is no water, no education and no health facilities for the people."
Journalist Dastageer Bhatti said that the provincial government had destroyed the future of the next generation. "These people have ruined almost everything. No institution works for the benefit of the people but only for the benefit of politicians."
Meanwhile, Pakistan Muslim League-Functional MPA Mehtab Akbar Rashdi claimed that state institutions were being used to settle personal scores. Urging the new provincial home minister, Suhail Anwar Siyal, to refrain from using government machinery for the service of influential people, she said that the state should stay away from such enmities.
"Silencing the voices of citizens by terrorising them is a grim reminder of dictatorial regimes," pointed out journalist Hamsafar Gadhi, declaring that the Sindh government had trampled over all norms of democracy and human rights.
Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz legislator Shafi Muhammad Jamote believed, however, that such actions had not even occurred in dictatorial regimes. "It is contempt of court," he remarked. "The police should not be part of the personal enmity between [former home minister] Zulfiqar Mirza and Zardari."
The speakers demanded a judicial inquiry into the matter, saying that the perpetrators should be charged under the anti-terrorism act.
Published in The Express Tribune, May 26th, 2015.
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