Mass graves, missing persons and target killings

Prof Ahmed says a mass grave of 302 bodies was unearthed in July in Swat valley.

ISLAMABAD: Professor Khursheed Ahmed of the Jamaat-e-Islami made some startling revelations in Wednesday’s Senate session, where the law and order situation of the country topped the agenda.

Ahmed, who went on to advocate in-house change and mid-term polls, said a mass grave of 302 bodies was unearthed in July this year in the troubled Swat valley, where the Pakistan Army had conducted an operation against militants. He said he wasn’t sure who the deceased were but it was a crime that a civilised society should investigate thoroughly.

He quoted an intelligence report warning that Karachi was heading towards a civil war. The report was dated May 2010, when the city was witnessing one of the worst spates of target killings. “At least 1,540 people were killed in Karachi, only in violence-related incidents. Forty-eight per cent of them were Pashtun, 33 per cent were Urdu-speaking and 18 per cent were Sindhis,” he said.

Speaking about Balochistan, he said that in the last three years, intelligence agencies had taken into custody over 1,600 people from Balochistan, including 352 who went missing during the tenure of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) government. Senator Semeen Siddiqui of PML-Quaid (PML-Q) criticised the Sindh home ministry and said that land-grabbers were mainly responsible for the deteriorating law and order situation in Karachi.

PML-Q’s Senator SM Zafar said an ethnic cleansing had started in Balochistan and lamented that no one was voicing support for the settlers. “Daku raaj is prevailing in Sindh, sectarianism has gripped Punjab and the law in a jungle is better than what is being seen in Fata,” he said, adding that the solution to Karachi’s situation lay in deweaponising the city. Senate Chairman Farooq H Naek questioned the federal health ministry’s response towards increasing cases of dengue fever in the country. The ministry, he said, had not called any meeting nor had it chalked out a strategy to counter the virus. Health Minister Makhdoom Shahabuddin was especially called to the house to respond to queries about the Dengue virus. Naek told the health minister to summon a meeting of provincial health ministers and secretaries to formulate a strategy. Earlier, Shahabuddin said that there was no vaccine in the world that could prevent or cure Dengue fever.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 4^th, 2010.