ANP: army action needed for target killers

KARACHI:

There should be an army operation against target killers, declared the Awami National Party (ANP) at a grand rally at the Bakhtiari Youth Centre near KDA ground in North Nazimabad on Sunday.

“The supply of arms needs to end in Karachi and a law, banning all weapons, should be passed in the assembly,” said Sindh ANP’s chief, Shahi Syed Bakht, to the crowd that was estimated to have been in the thousands. “We will keep organising such meetings until justice is delivered to us.”

The public meeting was held in memory of May 12, 2007 when 45 people were killed, including ANP workers, when the then-non functional chief justice was supposed to be welcomed to Karachi.

While asking the chief justice to take suo motu notice of the 2007 violence, Shahi Syed also demanded an inquiry by a dedicated judicial commission of the Supreme Court. The government should also compensate those who lost their loved ones and whose possessions were vandalised.

Shahi Syed said that the government should also try to solve the problems of the Karachi Electric Supply Company workers, who have been protesting against the management. He suggested that the corporation should go back to being under the government’s control.

Talking about a previous speech about the May 12 violence, he said that he had spoken harshly against Urdu-speaking people and he should not have done so. He had been distressed after witnessing the violence first hand.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 16^th, 2011.