Unhappy hosts: 12 nationalist parties to prevent IDPs from entering Sindh

Save Sindh Movement will also stage protests against incoming refugees.

KARACHI:

The Save Sindh Movement will stage protests across the province against the arrival of the Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in Sindh. Twelve nationalist parties will also block the main roads across Sindh from July 9 to July 15.

“The arrival of the displaced persons is against the interests of the people of Sindh,” said Sindh United Party (SUP) president and the convener of the movement, Syed Jalal Mehmood Shah. “We won’t allow anyone else to enter into Sindh now. This is enough.”

The SUP organised an all-parties meeting of nationalists parties where civil society activists and literary figures discussed the prevailing issue and its consequences in Sindh. “The IDPs should be given temporary shelter near their areas or near Islamabad, not in Sindh,” he said, adding that millions of people from Afghanistan and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa are already residing in the province, disturbing the province’s demographic, social and economic conditions.

“The Afghan refugees who came to Sindh in 1979 brought cocaine, Kalashnikovs and militancy to Sindh,” he claimed. “We are already overburdened and cannot afford to take in anymore immigrants.”

During his press conference at Haider Manzil on Thursday, along with leaders of different parties, Shah said that after the arrival of the people from North Waziristan, a sense of insecurity has spread in Sindh. “We have restored the Save Sindh Movement again,” he added, saying that the protest movement will be launched from Kashmore to Dadu.



The nationalist parties will block all major roads every day for seven days. The roads leading to Karachi will also be blocked if the federal and provincial governments do not stop the arrival of the IDPs immediately, he warned.

“The Sindh government has been extremely irresponsible,” said Shah, adding that the Save Sindh Movement had pushed the provincial government in 2012 to withdraw the Sindh Local Government Ordinance.

“Thousands of people displaced by the floods of 2010 are still on the roads, the Sindh government has failed to rehabilitate them but ‘outsiders’ are being allowed to enter Sindh freely,” said Shah. He further added that about 50 per cent of the people displaced during the Swat operation, are still residing in different areas of the province, including Karachi.

Shah said that all the leaders who attended the meeting agreed that this was an issue of national importance. “We will not allow the provincial and federal government to allow IDPs to enter Sindh again,” he said.

Shah said that the constitution does not allow the vast movement of people from one province to another. “The movement of people should be restricted,” he said. He appreciated the armed forces operation against militants but said that that the method was wrong as common people were being displaced without prior information.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 5^th, 2014.