Security concerns: ‘Do your job instead of advising people to move out’

Former nazim was advised by law enforcers to move his son-in-law abroad.

KARACHI: In light of the threats to Niamatullah Khan’s son in law, disclosed by a paramilitary force two days ago, the 82-year old former city nazim asked the government to provide security to the people of the country instead of simply issuing warnings.

“This is a city of more than 20 million people,” said Khan at the Karachi Press Club on Friday. “In the face of their [law enforcement agencies] ineffectiveness, they want everybody to abandon their homes and businesses and move somewhere else.”

Khan was advised by a paramilitary force two days ago to shift his son-in-law, Aziz Khalid, out of the country since he was suspected of being on a terrorist hit-list. Khan was told that a ten-member group has been assigned to carry out his son-in-law’s murder, although he has no political affiliation.

This information was reportedly revealed during the interrogation of two suspects who were nabbed by the paramilitary force around a week back. They disclosed that their ten-member group was involved in target killings at the behest of a political party.

Khan said that if the law enforcement agencies were aware that a person was likely to be killed, then they should have knowledge about the terrorist elements involved. “Instead of taking action against the terrorists, they advise the potential victim to move out of the country.”

Bad governance

“Karachi was not like this,” said the former nazim while referring to his 65 years in the city - as a citizen and an administrator.

“Now, whenever I step out of my house, one police mobile stays with me for security.”

There are those who have handicapped the security agencies, said Khan, while blaming the present coalition partners in the government for the violence in the city. “They are busy in eliminating each other’s activists as well as those of other political parties, to the extent that now tortured bodies, gunny bags and target killings have become a norm in this city,” he said. “This is a coalition which itself is involved in target killings and breed terrorists for this purpose.”

He was vocal about the government’s incapability to perform its basic duties, saying that if the citizens of Karachi do not feel safe, then the provincial assembly nor the government has any right to continue its tenure.

“Democracy does not demand that you cling to power in the face of complete failure,” said Khan. “The government officials should have the decency to step down and the people should have the power to throw out such a government.”

He asked Sindh Chief Minister Qaim Ali Shah to justify holding his office when more than 150 people were being killed each month in Karachi. Jamaat-e-Islami Karachi Chief Muhammad Hussain Mehanti and Secretary General Naseem Siddiqui were present at the press conference.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 1^st, 2012.