MQM membership campaign starts tomorrow
February 8, 2012 by Trend PK
Filed under World News
TrendPK.com
KARACHI: Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) has announced to start membership campaign throughout the country from tomorrow (Thursday), TrendPK reported on Wednesday.
MQM Leader Anis Ahmed Qaimkhani urged the people of the country to join Altaf Hussain for real change.
During a news conference at Nine Zero, Qaimkhani said that the MQM has decided membership campaign as the party is getting popularity throughout the country. TrendPK
PPP-MQM key meeting in CM House today
February 7, 2012 by Trend PK
Filed under World News
TrendPK.com
KARACHI: Leaders of ruling Pakistan Peoples Party and its ally, Muttahida Qaumi Movement, are going to hold a key meeting at Chief Minister House tonight (on Tuesday), TrendPK reports.
Sources said the meeting will be attended by MQM minister, MNAs, MPAs and senior PPP leaders from Sindh, including Chief Minister Syed Qaim Ali Shah.
They said the PPP would try to convince its ally over new local government system being introduced in Sindh, the 20th Constitutional Amendment, upcoming Senate and general elections and other government steps it seeks allies’ support for.
The MQM leaders, sources said, would convey their concerns to PPP over postings, appointments and transfers in the Sindh government.
The meeting will be followed by a banquet. TrendPK
Altaf demands judicial inquiry into Lahore factory collapse
February 6, 2012 by Trend PK
Filed under World News
TrendPK.com
LONDON: Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) Chief Altaf Hussain Monday expressed grief over the sad incident involving collapse of a factory building as a result of boiler blast.
Voicing sorrow over the mishap which killed two people and injured many others, Altaf Hussain, in a statement issued from London, demanded judicial inquiry into the incident.
The MQM chief urged the party activists to partake in the relief efforts, adding it is criminal to establish a medicine factory in the residential areas.
The owners of the factory should be brought to book at the earliest, he demanded. TrendPK
65 killed in Karachi violence: officials
August 21, 2011 by Trend PK
Filed under Breaking News
KARACHI: Ethnic and criminal violence blamed on gangs has killed 65 people in Pakistan’s financial capital of Karachi, with police the latest victims shot dead in a brazen ambush, officials said Saturday.
The government has been left struggling for solutions to the worst wave of unrest to sweep the city in 16 years as extra deployments of police and paramilitary officers appear unable to stem the troubles.
Spiralling unrest is a major source of concern in Pakistan’s biggest city, which is used by NATO to ship the bulk of its supplies to troops fighting in Afghanistan and which accounts for around a fifth of the country’s GDP.
The violence has been linked to ethnic tensions between the Mohajirs, the Urdu-speaking majority represented by the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), and Pashtun migrants affiliated to the Awami National Party (ANP).
Gunmen ambushed police late on Friday, sparking gunbattles in which four officers were killed and more than 30 others wounded, officials said, bringing the death toll to 65 since Wednesday morning.
The police commandos, dressed in plain clothes, were targeted in the eastern neighbourhood of Korangi, which had previously been immune from the troubles.
“These policemen were in a van going on a raid on a tip-off when they were intercepted by armed men who started firing, injuring many policemen,” senior police official Shaukat Hussain told AFP.
“The police returned fire and at least one attacker has been killed.”
Television footage showed injured policemen being carried by their comrades and local residents into ambulances and private vehicles heading to hospital.
“Our hospital has received 32 injured policemen, four of whom are critically injured. They all have gunshot wounds,” said Seemin Jamali, spokeswoman for the Jinnah Post Graduate Medical Centre.
Karachi city police chief Saud Mirza told AFP that four police were killed.
Speaking after the funerals of the dead policeman on Saturday, provincial police chief Wajid Durrani said two of the attackers who fired at the police van were arrested.
“We have caught two attackers and we are interrogating them about others,” Durrani said, adding that 18 people who were kidnapped on Friday had been retrieved by police.
Provincial home minister Manzoor Wasan said he could not give details about which parties or ethnic groups were involved in the violence, but said that “some 100 suspects had been arrested so far”.
Witnesses in Korangi said there were pockets of intense gunfire between armed groups with ordinary people too frightened to leave home. Dominated by Urdu speakers, the area also has Pashtun, Baluch and Sindhi populations.
Karachi, currently a city of 18 million inhabitants and the country’s economic powerhouse, has seen its population explode since independence in 1947.
Its neighbourhoods have been swollen by a huge influx of migrants from across the country, but particularly the deprived Pashtun northwest, looking for jobs and more recently to escape Taliban and Al-Qaeda-linked violence.
Speaking off the record because they were not authorised to release the information to the media, two security officials confirmed that 65 people had now died in violence in Karachi since Wednesday morning.
The city’s worst-affected areas are impoverished and heavily populated neighbourhoods where most of the criminal gangs are believed to be hiding.
Independent economist A.B. Shahid estimated that 20 percent of the city’s business was shut down on Thursday with markets closed in southern neighbourhoods to protest against extortion money demanded by criminal gangs.
Underlining the brutality of the violence, one security official said bodies of those kidnapped and killed had been stuffed in sacks before being dumped in various parts of the city.
He said the bullet-riddled bodies of four young men who worked for a mobile phone company had been found in a van with their hands and feet trussed in the impoverished Shershah neighbourhood.
“At least 20 killed on Thursday were kidnapped and tortured by armed gangsters. Their bodies were later stuffed in sacks and thrown away in different areas,” the security official told AFP on condition of anonymity.
Notes had been left inside the pockets of clothes worn by some of the victims that read “Want more bodies?”, the official said.
The independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan said 800 people have been killed in Karachi so far this year, compared with 748 in 2010. AGENCIES
Pakistan’s poor dying in Karachi violence
KARACHI: Life stopped for Pakistani cab driver Ghulam Mohammed when his seven-year-old daughter was shot dead on her way home from school, a victim of senseless political and ethnic violence sweeping Karachi.
Shumaila was Mohammed’s only child, born after he and his wife struggled for 12 years to have a baby. It took two stray bullets to bury all the hopes and dreams they had for the future.
“She was the one who gave meaning to our life. Now we have no reason to live,” said the tearful 36-year-old, a resident of Qasba Colony, one of a series of troubled neighbourhoods in western Karachi turned into a battlefield.
Shumaila was one of 300 people whom the independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) says died in political and ethnically linked shootings in Karachi last month and one of the 800 killed since the start of this year.
She was carrying her books when the bullets pierced her abdomen and splintered a rib. Seriously wounded, she was eventually picked up by an ambulance after medics struggled to access the street under gunfire.
“Someone told me my daughter had been shot and I rushed to hospital despite all the risks, only to find her dead in the morgue,” Mohammed said.
Many link the killings to rising tensions between the Mohajirs, the Urdu-speaking majority represented by the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), and Pashtun migrants affiliated to the Awami National Party (ANP).
Karachi is Pakistan’s financial capital and, with a population of around 18 million, its largest city. Helped by its Arabian Sea port, industry in Karachi is thought to account for around a fifth of the country’s GDP.
But authorities appear powerless to stop the bloodshed, human rights activists say, pointing out that most of the victims are innocent civilians.
“People have been killed because of their political affiliations, but it seems most are killed because of their ethnic background,” Zohra Yusuf, chairwoman of the HRCP, told AFP.
“The majority of them are poor and destitute.”
Shumaila was Pashtun. Her father arrived in Karachi from the northwest 20 years ago looking for work and then settled down and got married.
Today the northwest is on the frontline of Taliban and Al-Qaeda-linked bomb attacks and the migrant flow to Karachi is even greater.
Shumaila’s bereaved parents live on a congested street in a neighbourhood of Urdu and Pashtun speakers, where trigger-happy gunmen from both sides can quickly reduce the area into a battlefield.
HRCP says Karachi suffers political, ethnic and sectarian “polarisation”.
But the government blames vague mafias involved in land grabbing and drug pushing for the killings, and for creating “misunderstandings” among political parties and ethnic hatred.
“It should not be called ethnic violence,” said Sharfuddin Memon, an official in the home ministry of the southern province Sindh, of which Karachi is the capital.
“The mafias are killing people in such a manner that rival communities and parties are left with the impression of an ethnic war which is not there. The mafias do this to get stronger and weaken the writ of the state.”
The Urdu-speaking family of Anwer Ali, 22, say he was walking to work when unknown gunmen shot him dead.
“He was the only bread earner for his mother and two sisters,” said his cousin Mohsin Ali.
The family rent a one-room house in a squatter settlement near the area of Katti Pahari, a flashpoint for the most recent violence, and are deeply frightened about the future.
It is not just shootings. People have seen everything they own go up in smoke, with their houses, buildings and vehicles set alight by arsonists.
Despite the deployment of extra police and paramilitary forces, residents complain that the security personnel do nothing to help.
Leaders in the MQM and ANP have blamed each other.
“Mafias are involved in the killings, but armed wings of political parties have played a big role in creating the mess,” said Tauseef Ahmed Khan, who teaches mass communications at Urdu University.
The armed wings work to maintain party influence, prevent rival groups from infiltrating their territories and force people to remain loyal, he said.
“There are killings on ethnic grounds while most of the victims are poor people who don’t know the reason why they are being killed,” Khan said. AGENCIES
Altaf welcomes restoration of LG system
The MQM chief in his statement issued from London that he offered congratulations to the Pakistan People’s Party and the Muttahida Qaumi Movement for conducting successful dialogs and restoring the local government system in Karachi and Hyderabad.
He offered gratitude to Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani and President Asif Ali Zardari for their efforts to establish peace in Karachi.
He said that decision taken about Sindh would prove a mile stone for the promotion of democracy in the country.
Earlier, Sindh Governor Dr Ishratul Ebad issued the ordinance to restore local government system and cancel the commissionerate system in Karachi and Hyderabad on the night between Saturday and Sunday.
The decision came at a meeting between PPP leader Babar Awan, Sindh Chief Minister Syed Qaim Ali Shah and Sindh Governor Dr Ishratul Ebad at the Sindh Governor’s House.
MQM chief condoles death of party workers
In a press statement issued from London, the Muttahida Qaumi Movement chief Altaf Hussain condoled the death of Asif Ali, Muneer Ahmed and Muhammad Naeem with the bereaved families.
The MQM Rabita Comittee said that the incident was a conspiracy to deteriorate the Karachi peace. The Rabita Comittee also demanded the governor and the Sindh chief minister take notice of the killings and order the arrest of miscreants involved in the incident.
MQM’s delegation reaches Pervaiz Elahi’s residence
LAHORE: A delegation of Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) has arrived at the residence of Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi, a leader of PML-Q, TrendPK reported Thursday afternoon.
A key leader of MQM, Farooq Sattar, also the Deputy Convener of party’s coordination committee, is leading the delegation. TrendPK
30 arrested in Karachi on extortion charges: Malik
April 6, 2011 by Trend PK
Filed under Breaking News
ISLAMABAD: Interior Minister Rehman Malik has said that a ministerial committee has been constituted to prevent extortion in Karachi.
In a statement in the Upper House today (Tuesday), Malik has claimed that 30 people have been arrested in Karachi on charges of extortion.
His statment came after trade bodies observed a shutter-down strike in the metropolis against the rising incidents of extortion.
“No revengeful act will be initiated against anyone. Only real culprits will be punished,” he said.
On the other hand, Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) withdrew its bill seeking weapon-free country.
Federal Law Minister Dr. Babar Awan, on the occasion said, the bill has some legal misfits which will be tabled in Senate after a thorough review.
Later, opposition parties staged a token walkout from Senate to express solidarity with missing persons while, MQM staged a walkout in protest against the rising incidents of extortion in Karachi. TrendPK
Four lose lives in Karachi violence
KARACHI: At least four people including a woman were killed in the ongoing spate of violence and firing incidents in the metropolis.
The string of firing incidents which erupted abruptly in the city, seems to have come to a halt, as a let-up in the situation is being currently witnessed; however, the citizens are still distressed.
At least two bodies including one of a woman were retrieved from Bhains Colony area of Sukhan yesterday morning. Both the deceased were kidnapped, tortured and hanged to death.
Meantime, body of a youth was recovered from under Teen Hatti Bridge. The youth was shot to death after torture. However, all three deceased could not be identified as yet.
Funeral prayers for the eternal peace of former UC Nazim Muhammed Haneef of Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), were offered near City Court. He was targeted near Paan Mandi area of Risalah a day ago. MQM’s office-bearers and workers attended the prayers in large number. In the meantime, local residents staged a protest against incidents of target killing.
Later on, Haneef was laid to rest in Yaseenabad cemetery.
Meantime, the funeral prayers for the eternal peace of Muhammed Sabih, who was gunned down
