Solidarity rally: MQM puts up show of strength in Karachi

Party lashes out at BBC’s ‘biased’ report; says media cannot act as judiciary .

As tens of thousands of workers gathered in support of their party chief, leaders of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) said on Sunday that they rejected the BBC’s report on the investigation into the murder of Dr Imran Farooq. “No investigation has taken any formal shape and no one has been charged or nominated. The report can influence British courts, but we won’t let the media become prosecutor, investigator or judiciary,’ said MQM MNA Farooq Sattar. ‘’We reject the vilification against us and we will use our legal rights against the media’s propaganda.”

Wearing head- and arm-bands saying ‘I am Altaf’, shouting ‘Jeay Altaf’ slogans and clutching banners denouncing a ‘media trial’, the crowd gathered at the New MA Jinnah Road opposite Mazar-e-Quaid in a bid to express solidarity and ‘Allegiance with Altaf Hussain.’ They jostled for space from MA Jinnah Road till Teen Hatti and Capri Cinema.

Sattar claimed the BBC is  ‘media trial’, the crowd gathered at the New MA Jinnah Road opposite Mazar-e-Quaid in a bid to express solidarity and ‘Allegiance with Altaf Hussain.’ They jostled for space from MA Jinnah Road till Teen Hatti and Capri Cinema.



Sattar claimed the BBC is ‘biased’, pointing to a report in 1965 saying Indian forces had conquered Lahore and adding that the organization is coming under pressure from the ‘MQM’s opponents’. “Whether it is the UK’s BBC or Pakistan’s BBC, I want to remove the misconception that the MQM’s popularity has declined or the party has split into different groups,” he said. “In the end, the conspirators in the country said after twenty years that the charges against the MQM were false and in fact propaganda against us,” he said. “Very soon those conspiring abroad will do the same.”

As party leaders lashed out against the media’s ‘character assassination’, deputy convener Khalid Maqbool Siddqui said the media trial the MQM had faced within Pakistan had now extended itself to foreign shores.

MNA Nabil Gabol termed the report ‘yellow journalism’, saying that if the organisation persisted in airing such reports, very soon they would not be able to broadcast within Pakistan as no one would believe them. While the party was being targeted, it did not fight back as innocent party workers were being ‘picked up’, he said. “We could have closed this city down in half an hour but we didn’t,” he added. Party leader Amir Khan said the report should have included an unedited version of lawyer Farogh Naseem’s interview.

Faisal Sabzwari said that Altaf Hussain’s only crime was that he refused to sell party tickets or bring his family into politics, giving common party workers the chance to represent the MQM in assemblies.

The MQM had earlier expressed its well wishes to the premier on the formation of a committee to coordinate with the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan. On Sunday, however, Haider Abbas Rizvi said, “As far as I know, in Islam, there can either be forgiveness for killers or the punishment of an eye for an eye.” Karachi, he said, is the only city that rejects terrorists in its provincial assembly. “I hope that our city is not handed to them in the name of dialogue,” he added.

The crowd included members of the Sikh, Hindu and Christian community and Reverend Shepherd Anwar Jawed also spoke on the occasion, saying that Altaf is a leader for all religious communities. The party chief extended his thanks to his workers through a statement.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 3^rd, 2014.