MQM press conference: ‘Shia members targeted’

Conspiracy was in the works against the party aiming to terrorise its Shia workers, divide Sindh.

KARACHI: The Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) has highlighted a worrying trend in the current spate of target killings in the city according to which party workers belonging to the Shia sect are being singled out.

Addressing a press conference at Nine Zero — the party’s headquarters — on Sunday, Rabita Committee member Wasay Jalil said a grand conspiracy was in the works against the party aiming to terrorise its Shia workers and divide Sindh, especially its urban centres, on sectarian lines.

Jalil said many similar attempts had been made in the past, where people belonging to the Shia, Deobandi and Barelvi groups were killed. “But all such attempts failed to divide the people on religious lines.” However, this time the conspirators had adopted a new strategy, the MQM leader said.

Jalil said conspirators were deliberately killing office bearers of the party on purely religious lines in order to provoke a new wave — a more violent one — of sectarian violence in the city.

He believes the conspiracy began with the cold-blooded murder of the party’s Sindh Assembly member, Raza Haider, on August 2, 2010 in Nazimabad.

“Since that day, there has been a manifold increase in the killing of our workers on religious lines.”

He said the murders of Nazimabad joint sector incharge Adil Jafri on January 3 and senior activist Yawar Abbas on January 8 in PIB Colony were recent examples of the conspiracy. Another activist Asim Abbas from Hyderabad was battling for his life at a hospital.

While some people ‘shamefully’ blame the party for target killings, he asked, “Who is targeting our workers on clearly religious lines?” He urged authorities to take notice of the killings and immediately nab the killers.

Speaking with The Express Tribune, Jalil said authorities had nabbed two suspects involved in the Raza Haider assassination. Authorities had informed the party through unofficial channels that terrorists belonging to the proscribed Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan were targeting them, he said. “Extremists are after us.”

Without naming Home Minister Zulfiqar Mirza, Wasay said the party would wait and see what steps the provincial government would take to improve the law and order situation. “We will highlight our concerns with the chief minister as well,” he added.

MQM claims that more than 200 people, who were either their workers, sympathisers or office bearers were killed last year and already three of their activists have been killed in the current year.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 10^th, 2011.