Lyari reacts: When the ‘people’ goes missing in the Pakistan Peoples Party

People from Lyari have not gone to Garhi Khuda Bux for ZAB’s death anniversary for the first time in party’s...

KARACHI:

For the first time in the history of the Pakistan Peoples Party, the ‘people’ will be missing.

Lyari will not be going to Garhi Khuda Bux to commemorate party founder Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s 33rd death anniversary today.

This will be a silent boycott by one of the PPP’s strongest constituencies. It is now openly angry for coming on the receiving end of the tear gas, gunfire and lathi-charge wielded by the police that is commandeered by the party Benazir Bhutto led.

For the first time in many years, the PPP anthem ‘Dila’n Teer Bija’n’ did not sound from the lanes of Lyari on one of the party’s most significant days.

The residents seem to have more important things on their agenda. Young men went about the neighbourhood on Tuesday cleaning up the rubble left over from the rioting to resist the police as they tried, unsuccessfully, to cleanse the area of ‘gangsters’. Some of them still roamed about with automatic weapons as others warily eyed the police through digital telescopes from rooftops.

Till last year, up to 50 buses full of people would set out for Garhi Khuda Bux from Lyari. Fifty-two-year-old Bilqees, a member of the women’s wing of the party, said that she gathered up to 400 women every year to pay their respects at the Bhutto mausoleum.

Not this year, as everyone is in mourning for the nine people who were killed in the riots and they are thus not willing to leave their homes. Bilqees’s eyes fill with tears as she recalls memories of Benazir Bhutto and her father. She too, like many others, criticises the current PPP leaders and for taking action against their diehard supporters in Lyari. “Our slogan has always been ‘daal roti khaingay, Bhutto ko laingay’ (We will survive on gruel, but we will bring Bhutto to power). But we had no idea that our party will become Anjuman-e-Ghulaman-e-Zardari,” she said. The Association of the Servants of Zardari.

A day after a massive fight with the police, some parts was still strained and roads in Chakiwara, Baghdadi, Singhu Lane, Ali Muhammad Mohalla and Moosa Lane were barricaded. Some people gathered at Aath Chowk to protest against Federal Interior Minister Rehman Malik, PPP MNA Nabeel Gabol and CID SSP Chaudhry Aslam, an officer who came under rocket attack a day earlier. They demanded cases be registered against them for the murders of their people.

“We have proven our loyalty to the PPP but it has always given us body bags of our loved ones in return,” said Najeeb Baloch, who lost two nephews on October 18, 2007, when Benazir’s rally was attacked at Karsaz. “We want to know where our fault lies.”

A woman living in Ali Muhammad Mohalla said that her son went missing when the police began shelling them. “I have visited Lyari and Civil hospitals a number of times but I can’t find my son,” she said. “It seems our co-chairman [Zardari] has shut his eyes and shut his mouth. He has surrendered to terrorists,” said Abdul Manan, a former councillor and one of the protest leaders. “If this continues then the people will take a decision to part ways with the PPP.” According to him, the operation in Lyari was undertaken to “please” a coalition partner – the Muttahida Qaumi Movement.

However, despite threats to his life and attempts by the police to arrest him, Habib Jan Baloch, an activist of the Peoples Amn Committee and a member of PPP’s Sindh council, said that they will commemorate Bhutto’s death anniversary, even if they don’t make it to Garhi Khuda Bux.

“Not a single case was lodged against us when we were protesting against Ziaul Haq,” he said. “It is very unfortunate that our own government has registered murder cases against me during the recent violence.”

Published in The Express Tribune, April 4^th, 2012.