Eyewitness: Karachi
A narrative of the events of ‘Black Saturday’ and the ‘stop-the-blame-game’ argument
By Beena Sarwar
“Here in Karachi, we avoid ‘name calling’ and ‘finger pointing’ due to fear of having our knees drilled…”
On May 12, 2007, Karachi witnessed orchestrated mayhem. Such carnage is hardly unique to Karachi or to Pakistan – law enforcement agencies have stood by and even participated in worse massacres elsewhere, like Northern Ireland and Gujarat, India. In Karachi that day, ‘only’ about 46 lives were lost, and 150 or so injured.
But this was the first time in Pakistan that live television cameras captured the situation for viewers to see: government tankers used to block off routes to the airport, police and rangers conspicuous by their absence or standing idle as armed men ran amok on the streets of Karachi, corpses and wounded bodies lying by the wayside in pools of blood.
The security plans chalked out for May 12 were abandoned overnight. The Sindh home department withdrew the weapons of most law enforcement personnel in Karachi on May 12. Armed only with batons, the 15,000 or policemen deployed in the city avoided the violent areas. Rangers who were to hold key positions on the ‘flyovers’ on the main airport road were nowhere in sight. Instead, armed men in civilian clothes held those posts, and fired into the crowds trying to reach the airport to receive the chief justice stranded inside.
At 5:00am on Saturday morning, Shahrah-e-Faisal (Drigh Road), the main airport route normally trafficked at all hours, was deserted as a journalist friend in Karachi found who was out and about early. He emailed me: “I saw something which gave me the chills – no police or Rangers on the roads, just kids with guns guiding trucks, tankers to block the intersections, entry and exit points on the main artery of city. I saw an NLC truck also being used to block the road (picture attached). We all know NLC is Pakistan’s largest trucking company, owned and managed by the army. Tie-rods were being removed from front tires so the vehicles could not be moved even by a tow truck. I thought, “What if ambulances are required to move on Shahrah-e-Faisal?” My thought was immediately answered when I saw two KKF ambulances moving freely (Khidmat-Khalq Foundation, MQM’s social service wing) and MQM activists among those supervising the blockade.”
Getting to office took him two hours, a journey that even during rush hour takes only 45 minutes. “I told my colleagues about my fear and almost all of them told me to relax as MQM is not that stupid they will not repeat the 1992 & 94 stupidity. By 12 noon Karachi was bleeding.”
“There were bodies lying at every street intersection,” ‘Uzi’, a reporter related later on her blog. “We picked up a whole bunch of them and put them inside police mobiles parked nearby.” As for the police and the Rangers: “They did NOTHING! They stood around and LOITERED while my city was tainted with blood.”
The areas she covered were the second bloodiest that day. It took her nearly an hour to get to Jinnah’s mausoleum (Mazar-e-Quaid), normally a 15-20 minute drive from her house. At Kashmir Road the cab driver couldn’t go any further and she walked the remaining distance. At around 01:00pm, she was stopped by a political worker who put a TT pistol to her forehead (“NOT the temple, the FOREHEAD”). She was allowed to proceed after showing her press card.
Over at the Sindh High Court, lawyer Ayesha Tammy Haq sent this text message around 5 pm Karachi time: “In the High court. Things getting worse. Judges will not leave as there will be a rampage…” (Later in an interview, General Musharraf denied such plans and reasserted his commitment to democratic politics. But then, he has also justified what happened in Karachi as ‘the political activity’ of a political party attempting to show its strength to its constituency – interview with Talat Hussain, Aaj TV, May 18, 2007)
Another lawyer emailed: “Not only was the Sindh High Court under virtual siege by armed activists, but lawyers attempting to enter the Court were repeatedly beaten and roughed up. The armed activists did not even spare the Judges of the High Court.” One judge was held at gun point and his car damaged. “While holding me at gun point, the youth called someone and stated ‘Yeh bolta hai kay High Court ka judge hai…kya karun is ka?..achaa theek hai, phir janay daita houn.’ (He says he’s a judge of the High Court. What should I do with him? Ok then, will let him go).”
Many judges, unable to drive to the Sindh High Court, had to leave their official ‘flag’ cars and make their way through menacing crowds and climb over the court’s back wall in order to reach their chambers.
Munir A. Malik, one of the 25 lawyers accompanying Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry from Islamabad to Karachi, narrates how they were forced to remain inside the airport. The Sindh government representatives offered to transport the Chief Justice by helicopter but this offer was for him alone. Since the lawyers with him had already foiled the attempts of ‘two uniformed people’ to “snatch the CJP and take him from the other side,” he refused. (‘Story at the Airport’, The News on Sunday, Special Report, May 20, 2007)
Armed men attacked lawyers at Malir District Bar, Iftikhar Chaudhry’s scheduled first stop in Karachi, killing a lawyer and injuring several others, including female lawyers. The CJP and his team, of course, were ‘externed’ to Islamabad after several hours. Late that night, residents in the low-income Ranchore Lines mohalla were awakened by loud banging on their doors. One resident relates that it was two young boys distributing freshly cooked biryani and suji in plastic bags: “Yeh chief justice ki wapsi ki khushi mein hai” (This is to celebrate the chief justice’s return [to Islamabad]).
On the Karachi streets, Uzi’s press card had saved her again at around 05:00 p.m. as she and a colleague tried to reach the Rangers Headquarters in Dawood College. “A car chockfull of ammunition passed in front of us, stopped, backed up and stopped in front of us, Kalashnikovs pointing at the two of us from the windows. We showed our press cards and the car moved on. NEVER in my LIFE have I felt more grateful to my press card than I did yesterday.”
At around 06:00 p.m., she and her colleague were trapped by gunshots all around. “Short of climbing the walls and entering one of the houses around, there really was no other place for us to go.” They stopped a police mobile and asked which way would be safe to go. The answer, accompanied by laughter: “You can be killed wherever you go. Choose your place.”
In published reports, journalists prudently avoided naming the parties involved. “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” (Urooj Zia, Daily Times, May 14).
But the affiliation of these gangs was visible in the live coverage provided by several private television channels, which showed plainclothes men b*****shing weapons on the deserted roads, using government tankers as cover, exchanging gunfire with unseen opponents, the tri-colour MQM flag visible on their motorcycles.
After Aaj TV’s continuous live coverage of such scenes, armed men attacked the television station, firing at it for several hours. Instead of stopping the coverage, Aaj showed live footage of reporters ducking behind a desk, shots being fired at their office, as anchor Talat Hussain provided an account of the situation on the phone. Reporters in the area asked the Rangers posted nearby to help the Aaj workers trapped inside their building. The answer: “We’re helpless. We can’t do anything unless we have orders from above.”
Aaj TV’s refusal to suspend its live coverage emboldened the new breed of ‘citizen journalists’. “My faith in independent media was restored and I was confident that I am not alone,” wrote one blogger. He had hesitated to post out the testimony of a doctor at a Karachi hospital who witnessed armed political workers turn up to finish off an injured political worker. Encouraged by the Aaj re-broadcasting of images that clearly showed the involvement of MQM workers in the violence, he published the testimony with a disclaimer that “it was an anonymously posted comment and could be entirely false, you be a judge for yourself.”
There is a story behind each of those who were killed, some belonging to one or other political party, and others just because they were there. Masked men stopped ambulances and sprayed them with bullets, killing an Edhi Ambulance driver, Faizur Rahman Khan, 65, when he refused to throw out a wounded person he was transporting to hospital from near the airport; the wounded man was also shot again. Armed gangs herded passers-by into an alley and shot dead a young overlock machine operator along with another man, in front of two colleagues who were also shot but survived to tell the tale (“They shot us one by one…” by Munawar Pirzada, Daily Times, http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2007\05\14\story_14-5-2007_pg12_3 ).