Message in a bottle: Embassies urged to think about Sindh

Majority of Sindhi people did not support the colonial commissionerate system nor the local government system.

HYDERABAD:

Foreign governments were advised not to neglect the people of Sindh in an open letter addressed to foreign embassies in Islamabad by the think tank Sindh Democratic Forum (SDF) and Awami Jamhori Party (AJP).

AJP president Abrar Qazi and SDF president Zulfiqar Halepoto claimed that most Sindhi speaking people felt that the United Kingdom and the United States of America favoured a Karachi based political group and neglected them. The letter discussed the recent protests and the Sindhi point of view from 1947 to the recent flip-flop of the local government and commissionerate system.

The think tank and AJP mentioned the August 13 province wide strike against the reinstatement of the local government system and advised the embassies to not measure the ruling political parties success from their electoral vote bank. In the letter the SDP and AJP stated that a majority of Sindhi people did not support the colonial commissionerate system but they disliked the local government system even more. “[…] Musharraf’s system made the districts administratively and financially independent but undermined the provincial control,” they said in the letter. They added that with a demand for dividing the province in the background, it could manifest Sindhi reservations.

The think tank and political party claimed that the Sindhi nation could play an instrumental part in the  war against terrorism.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 18^th, 2011.