Looking for justice: Lyari’s residents want to refer Uzair to military courts

Scores of women and children gather outside KPC

KARACHI: The residents of Lyari took to the streets against alleged gangster Uzair Baloch, the chief of the defunct Peoples Amn Committee, on Sunday, demanding that the government refer the cases against him to the military courts for speedy justice.

Scores of women and children staged two separate protests outside Karachi Press Club, carrying placards and photographs of their missing loved ones. Holding up pictures depicting Uzair being hanged, they shouted slogans asking for him to be executed in public for his involvement in the murders of several young men. "He [Uzair] is a murderer," cried a woman whose only son, Noshad Baloch, was among those killed. "He should be hanged publicly."

The protesters, who believed that Uzair was being taken into custody from Dubai by Pakistan's law enforcement agencies, suspected that he would be given 'VIP treatment' in prison. "He has destroyed our futures and ruined our families," said Noshad's sister. "He is not entitled to be dealt with as a politician."

Showing a photograph of Amad, a missing teenager, the protesters said that he had been kidnapped by Uzair's men about 18 months earlier while he was on his way to school. Although an operation against criminals is underway in Lyari, the women participating in the emotionally-charged protests were veiled to avoid being identified, while the men accompanying them avoided cameras at the site.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 19^th, 2015.