Karachi: The Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) will hold a protest demonstration outside the Karachi Press Club on Thursday against what it says are misleading reports issued by the Amnesty International.
A deputy convener of the MQM’s coordination committee, Nasir Jamal, termed the report of Amnesty International (AI) “baseless” and “fabricated”, saying such allegations from an organisation of international repute was a cause of great concern for the party.
The protest had been scheduled for May 2 but was postponed. The decision to hold the protest was taken at a high-level emergency meeting held simultaneously in London and Pakistan in which the members of coordination committee discussed the allegations levelled against the party in the report published by the AI regarding threats to media personnel in Pakistan.
The MQM leaders during the meeting rejected all allegations and called the report a “pack of lies”.
The MQM’s coordination committee said dozens of party workers had been arrested in front of their family members in the past two years and had been taken to detention centres where they were subjected to inhuman torture and also extrajudicial murders before their bodies were thrown on the road.
They said dozens of other workers had also been victims of enforced disappearances, but the AI report did not mention these human rights violations in its report.
Party leaders said the Supreme Court while hearing the Karachi suo-moto case had also blamed Jamat-e Islami, Awami National Party, Pakistan Peoples Party, Sunni Tehreek and other political and religious parties for having a part in deteriorating the law and order situation in the city but it was “strange’ that the AI had not read those remarks.
They lamented that for the past 22 years, the AI had been trying to portray the MQM as a mafia and its workers as killers while it depicted the killers of MQM workers as innocent and oppressed people.
They alleged that the AI had become a tout of thieves, smugglers, tyrant feudal lords and corrupt government, adding that the “unfounded and baseless” report issued by them had hurt the feelings of millions of MQM supports and public anger and protest over it was natural.