Re: Shouldn’t Musharaf be hanged…
http://www.unhcr.org/cgi-bin/texis/vtx/home/opendoc.htm?tbl=RSDCOI&page=research&id=3ae6a85d4
some key points
regardng 1995 a far more careful distinction is now being drawn between `terrorists’ and the general public. The old practice of sealing off entire localities for days on end and hauling away almost every young man in sight had proved counterproductive, for obvious reasons.
Despite General Babar’s claim that security forces had adopted a new strategy of “target arrests” (IPS 18 Aug 1995; The Herald Aug. 1995a, 27), mass round-ups and military-style siege-and-search operations were still commonly used
**There was growing evidence that the Rangers and police were involved in human rights abuses, including beatings, extortion, disappearances, torture and extrajudicial executions of suspected militants in faked encounter killings
**In one operation on 20 August 1995, police and Rangers cordoned off the neighbourhood of Pak Colony, a mostly poor area of 400,000 in Karachi’s West district, and took away hundreds of people, mostly youths, some blindfolded **
read it… it was a disgusting operation, handled in a disgusting manner…screw MQM, it was a friggin gang of idiots, but the operation that was supposedly in place to save teh victims, further victimized the victims.
lets not just talk about the 95 operation, but also the one in 92-93 time frame. the extrajudicial killings are a well documented fact noted by UN human rihts commission.
so whether innocent people die because a bomb falls on their heads, or because they are caught in some full neighourhood seige, or because the rangers just wanted to kill mohajirs all as the same beginning and same end, i.e. a govt plan, and the death of an innocent person. how they go aout killing an innocent person may be diff, but lets not swee this under the rug.
People I know were picked up and beaten by these matric fail tullas, just because they happen to live in areas known as MQM strogholds and they fit the profile i.e. male b/w ages of 15 and dead..or soemthing like that.
The operations took place under a democratically elected PM and were operations against the citizens, so much so that it was among the reasons given by leghari as he dismissed the govt.
not my words folks, its United Nations Human Rights Commission.
so when u talk about ‘dictator’ waging war against his own country’s people and all that, and if some democratically elected Pm would have done it they woulda been lynched in 3 days, unless its BBs ghost sitting in London, you are wrong.
That operation was a nightmare, in how it was handled, how brutal it was, how people were treated by police and rangers, how it became an extortion racket for the cops…I coud go on, but please, dont kep me from you reading the UN report yourself and then telling me that our democraticall elected leaders were oh so good and could do no wrong.