MicroPakistan

Here are a few accounts of people who witnessed the 12th May incident firsthand while doing their jobs. You can sense the disgust in both these emails. The first one is an email from a doctor posted at Teeth Maestro. The second was posted on Karachi Metroblogs and is written by Urooj Zia who writes for Daily Times.

On the other hand the CJ issue just keeps on getting interesting with more entertainment coming our way in the form of Mr Aitzaz Ahsan’s proposed Rs. 2 Billion libel suit against the President of Pakistan for blaming him for the deaths in Karachi. I wonder how he came up with that figure. Surely, his loss of reputation is not worth that much. It’s quite obvious he’s getting maximum political mileage from all this. An article in OutlookIndia.com by Mariana Babar hails him as Pakistan’s newest political hero. It says, ‘He’s said to be giving sleepless nights to Benazir. So, will he be tempted to float his own party, say, a Justice Party for the elections? The man who led the cavalcade from Islamabad to Lahore only smiles at the question. He isn’t talking, at least for now.‘ Now, THIS is a joke!

Back to the firsthand accounts: The first email was typed by the unnamed doctor from his mobile phone so there are a few typographical errors. Nevertheless, it is very easy to make out what he is trying to say.

I am a doctor. I work at a tertiary care, govt run, large and very well known hospital in khi. Forgive the short hnd style of typing here. I am, and hav been here at work for more than 32 hrs, and am surfing/typing on my cellphone. I rode with my ambulance drivers, was in the hastily set up emergency room in our lobby, attended multiple gunshot wounds victims etc. but nothing struck down my soul more than what 9 fully armed workers of MQM alongwith 2 sector office bearers did. They tried to drag out the wounded and dying body of a Sunni Tehrik worker (we later learnt he was sunni tehrik) for presumably finishing him off. Whn my junior residents said we could not allow that, they slapped my junior, dragged us both by our legs to the back of the gurney alley and with shotguns, pistols and ak-47’s in hand, ran in to our lobby presumably attempting to search whr the man in question was being treated. I ran out to the rangers and police a.s.i. some distance frm our front gate who when approached by myself said, and i quote ‘jaante ho inn logoun ko phir bhi kyon larta ho…hamain upar se order hai ke inn ko 4 baje tak karne do jo karna hai. 4 baje ke baad kuch dekhainge’. I recognized the sector office bearers of the MQM, bcoz I have made the mistake of voting for the MQM in the past. I called a friend in Bohrapir, who is related to Farooq Sattar. 5 mins later the sector charges recieved a call on their cell, and they left, one with a bandana threatening me with ‘naam dekh liya hai tera. Koi shor sharaba karne ki zururat nahi hai baad main warna samajh ja kya hoga’. He also took my junior residnts mobile fone saying ‘chikna set hai’. The guy they had come looking for had been shot one more time in the head. The o.t dress we had dressed him in 10 mins earlier was freshly bloody. I curse myself for all times i hav defended these people in discussions with friends. Bcoz i like many othrs made up my mind based on hearsay and wht familial and traditional biases i grew up with, without being exposed to their reality. Dont misunderstand me. The JI, JUP, pml, ppp, Sunni this and Shia tht, all othr parties may b infinitely worse. I m just saying tht all of us need to understand tht an argument should take place for one reason alone. To compel or b compelled. Whn we hav the logic and conviction to do the former or the sense and courage for the latter, we will stop seeing wht we witnessed in our city today. - unedited version

Urooj Zia’s account:

A gun-toting political activist placed a TT pistol’s barrel between my eyes Saturday afternoon when I refused to tell him where I had come from or where I was going.
I was at one of the party “check posts” that had been set up all over the city. Roads had been blocked, forcing people to walk. I had to walk from Kashmir Road to the Quaid-e-Azam’s mausoleum, because I had been assigned to report on events there.

On the way, I was stopped by one of the “post-keepers.” My press card was tucked away in my pocket, and for men who stopped me, I appeared to be an ordinary citizen walking alone on the road, devoid of any party flags, badges or banners. Questions were asked. But when I didn’t answer the TT pistol came out. It was at that point that I decided it was a good time to use the immunity that a press card is supposed to provide. “I’m a journalist,” I said, but was asked to prove it. Only after my press card was thoroughly scrutinized was I allowed to go ahead.

All of this happened while a police mobile until stood by, with policemen leaning against it, watching the entire scene, looking thoroughly bored. The policemen laughed if they were asked for help. A friend and I were trapped in a street near Guru Mandir. We could hear shots being fired from the direction of Business Recorder House, and had to get out to the Quaid’s mausoleum. All of a sudden we heard shots from all around us. Unless we wanted to be caught in what might escalate into a crossfire in the next couple of minutes, the only option left was to climb walls and jump into one of the surrounding houses (this was a residential area).

A police mobile came along, however, and we stopped it to ask the policemen for directions. “Take any street at all. Most of them lead to the mausoleum,” we were told. When reminded that we knew that most of the surrounding streets eventually led to the mausoleum, and that, we had asked them for the “safest” route out, one of the policemen said: “You can get killed whichever route you go on. Take your pick.” All of the men in the police mobile apparently found this funny enough to break into laughter.

While Aaj TV was under attack, a number of reporters on duty in the area went up to the Rangers personnel posted nearby and pleaded with them to help those trapped inside Business Recorder House. “We’re helpless. We can’t do anything unless we have orders from above,” the Rangers personnel kept saying, hours after the shooting had initially begun.

Other journalists reported sordid stories from around the airport. Young men toting flags and banners had set up camp outside the airport departure lounge. They hid, however, when policemen came by. Reporters in the vicinity were asked whether they had seen any political activists around. Munawar Pirzada (from Daily Times) said that he had seen some nearby. After the policemen had left, the activists came up to the reporter, dragged him by the hair and took him aside. They then proceeded to threaten him with dire consequences if he said anything the next time the policemen came around.

On M. A Jinnah Road, activists of the same party accosted myself and two other journalists with me and tried to bully us into giving our names, numbers and office addresses.