Faqir Colony raid : The boot in the face, the brute at dawn

Men rounded up in Orangi are wondering what the operation achieved except for their humiliation.

KARACHI: There is nothing like a raid at the crack of dawn to humiliate and scare a neighbourhood.

The rumbling trucks, the door banging and the masked men with punishing boots are an awesome sight for families curled up on the floor. Nearly 400 men, shivering in their cotton shalwar kameezes, were rounded up like criminals in Orangi Town’s Faqir Colony on Tuesday in the six-hour operation. And if the government officials who ordered the swoop wanted to send a message about target killings, it went through quite clear. The only problem is that this isn’t a one-way street.

“We have decided to retaliate if it happens again. Yesterday’s operation created a good image of the law enforcers and a bad image of the people,” said one man, who did not want to be named. “Not just our families and neighbours, but everyone in Karachi saw that we were being treated like criminals.”

The anger is perhaps understandable for the scores of men who were all released, except for two, after being declared innocent after questioning on the same day. The freed men are now asking what the point was.

“I do not think it was an achievement as the criminals easily escaped before the operation was launched and innocent people were arrested in exchange,” said a rickshaw owner.

“Honour is everything for the Pakhtun but yesterday I lost face in front of my wife, children as well as dozens of people from the area.”

It was a first for many of them who spent the hours in custody.

“Am I a criminal that I would evade arrest,” asked one of the detainees who was later released after he was declared innocent during questioning. “Detaining me in front of my wife and children was embarrassing.”

All their data was recorded, which is why the men did not want to be named if they talked about the experience. “What do you want?” asked one of them when requested to comment on the raid and give his name. “Do you want us to be arrested again? They [the Rangers] have our names and addresses and they will arrest us again if we talk against them.”

Wasn’t it enough that their names were on the list of detained people? “I spent the whole day and night in custody which not only upset me but also my family and relatives,” he said. “We were blindfolded and different officers kept arriving and questioning us.”

They asked for names, addresses, affiliations with political, religious and criminal gangs and later freed them after discovering there was nothing to worry about.

“I don’t really know why they picked me up,” said anothe man. “I did not know where they would keep me and what they would do to me.

While sitting in the truck, I thought that I knew that they would not kill me but I feared that they would torture us. But thank God they did not torture us.”

The men were provided food and blankets and were not beaten. “We too are human beings and know very well how to deal with innocent people,” said a Rangers official, who did not want to be named as he was not speaking in an official capacity. They were just following orders. “We provided food to the criminals because they are also human beings.”

Published in The Express Tribune, January 20^th,  2011.