Evicted residents have set up camp alongside the settlement. PHOTO: NNI
The Awami Workers’ Party (AWP) has called upon the government to stop the Capital Development Authority (CDA)’s ongoing eviction drive in the federal capital. The party also demanded resettlement of all the residents of the demolished I-11 informal settlement without delay.
Veteran lawyer and AWP president Abid Hassan Minto along with the party Chairperson Fanoos Gujjar and others addressing a press conference at the National Press Club on Sunday asked the government to stop turning poor and labourers of the city homeless.
They warned that if their demands were not met they would launch protest demonstrations against the government.
Minto said that according to Article 9 of the Constitution, the residents of Katchi Abadis were also equal citizens and it was the state’s responsibility not only to protect their lives but also provide them with food and shelter.
“In case the state does not provide them their basic constitutional rights, then the AWP will continue its struggle to expose government brutalities for protection of the rights of labourers and poor citizens of the country,” Minto said.
He said that the AWP had already filed a petition in the Supreme Court against eviction of residents of the informal settlement in a brutal manner. Minto said that the apex court was likely to take up the case today (Monday).
He rejected the notion that the I-11 slum was den of drugs and terrorism. He maintained that majority of slums were the abode of labourers and workers who came here to build roads and buildings.
He said that drug smugglers and terrorists live in posh localities not in slums.
The AWP president said that the CDA in one of its reports had said that most of the slums were developed when Islamabad was in its establishing phase and their residents played an important role in the building of the new city.
He said that the AWP would continue its struggle until justice and rightful compensation was provided to those who had been violently displaced.
Minto said that 66 people including an AWP worker, Hassan Turi, had been falsely charged under the Anti-Terrorism Act, which was an example of victimisation of political activists by authorities to cover up their own crimes. He demanded their immediate release.
Minto vowed that his party would challenge their arrest in court.
He said that all the detainees had been charged with terrorism by the police, demonstrating a conscious victimisation of all those associated with the party and a disenfranchisement of people’s democratic rights.
The AWP president said that the action against the I-11 slum demonstrated the “criminal manner” in which the state was carrying out the campaign.
“The AWP would continue to expose and challenge these illegal actions of the authorities through all available means,” he said.
The AWP Chairperson, Fanoos Gujjar, said that Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar strongly favoured the operation in I-11. He said that the minister owed the residents of the katchi abadi and all the people of the country an apology.
Gujjar also demanded dismissal of the Islamabad police chief.
Published in The Express Tribune, August 3rd, 2015.
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