Alleged discrimination: Altaf demands clarity on Mohajir status
Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) chief Altaf Hussain threw down the gauntlet to the army and the rest of Pakistan, challenging them to either accept Urdu-speaking people as equal citizens or not.
“Do you want to keep us and treat us as equal citizens of the country or not? Come out and tell us this clearly,” Altaf told a general workers’ convention in Karachi on Saturday.
Most of Altaf’s speech was ethnic-based and focused on the ‘injustices’ against the Urdu-speaking people by law enforcement agencies and politicians, as the workers shouted ‘Zinda Hai Mohajir, Zinda Hai.’
Altaf questioned Chief of Army Staff General Raheel Sharif, whom he called the head of the biggest army in the Muslim world, about discrimination against Mohajirs, and repeated points from his 14 questions which he presented a day earlier.
“Although the law enforcement agencies claim that there is no ill treatment against Urdu-speaking, the LEAs in their latest raid on an MQM meeting called workers the children of Rajiv and Indira Gandhi, taunted them as India Bhigoras, and asked them to go back to India,” Altaf said.
He warned the law enforcers not to think any nation as weak. “Or else one day, I will say enough is enough and from that day there will be no talks but only fighting,” he said.
Criticising Pakistan Peoples Party, he said that if roads and hospitals were not built in Naudero, is it MQM’s fault. “They eat up all the money and hate Urdu-speaking and don’t let development take place, and then take out rallies that Altaf Hussain is breaking up Sindh,” he said.
Altaf warned that if anyone thought Mohajirs could be thrown into the sea, they were mistaken. “If we drowned, we will drag the whole province down with us.”
He, however, clarified that he believed in dialogue and peace. “I call upon Sindh’s intellectuals to resolve the matter. We won’t fight and we will refuse to fight. But how many people will you kill?”
Over the past two months, Altaf said, he had undertaken the task of reorganising the party and resolved to keep only honest people. “But the establishment’s touts in the party try to disrupt that,” he added.
Altaf said once the Islamabad sit-ins are over, his party would hold a sit-in to unite people from all over the country.
Published in The Express Tribune, September 28th, 2014.
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Sympathy notwithstanding, stupidity cannot be rewarded. The poor judgment of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar Muslims shown in falling for the Two Nation Theory and uprooting and delivering themselves into bondage under domination of Punjabi Muslims cannot be rewarded by permitting their return to India even at the request of Mohajirs and even less so at the behest of the oppressors of Mohajir’s in Pakistan. Sympathy for their Indian roots however requires that India should begrudge providing full diplomatic and moral support for the formation of a Jinnahpur Republic homeland for Mohajirs in Pakistan occupied Punjab. Indian Consulates in Iran and Afghanistan must play proactive role in this endeavor not to mention role in gestating an independent Balochistan. India should not begrudge this much to the Mohajirs.