Sindhis also victims of recent violence

[Khehkeshan]

Re: Sindhis also victims of recent violence

MQM joined govnt after 2001 due the new change in global politics bought upon by 9/11. Some keep forgetting this little fact so conveniently.

And most of the articles posted here do not talk of the REAL events that have transpired in Sindh but of what some Q chaudries are saying or not saying. Just look up international media, at least they are not blind unlike the pakistani establishment’s “main na manoon” group.

Fact is that Sindhis have been a victim of Punjabi establishment for 60 years and going. You can’t hide the truth anymore, the international media has now also caught up to it. If America offers them a Kurdistan like autonomous setup, they will jump at the opportunity and Punjab will lose it’s cheap sea port access.

Notice this article for one and look at the slideshow and see the victims first hand.
http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB119974719357173263-lMyQjAxMDE4OTA5ODcwNDg3Wj.html

Sindhis’ anger is directed against neighboring Punjab, Pakistan’s most-populous province. Punjab, with its ethnic Punjabi majority, dominates the country’s army and federal bureaucracy and has long taken a disproportionate share of the country’s resources, many here say.

“The Punjabi elite treats us as a slave nation, and Sindh as an occupied territory,” says Qadir Magsi, head of the nationalist Sindh Taraqi Passand movement. “Benazir Bhutto was the last hope to keep Pakistan united. Now, this Pakistan must be broken apart.”

Rioters here torched hundreds of government offices, police outposts, railway stations and banks, all seen as symbols of the Pakistani state. According to Karachi’s chamber of commerce, damage in the province exceeded $1.3 billion.

Mobs targeted with particular vigor the trucks on Sindhi highways that link the Punjab with seaports. In Hyderabad, a major crossroads, hundreds of burned-out vehicle wrecks, some still smoldering, lined roads in every direction for several days. Truckers, virtually all of non-Sindhi origin, camped nearby, some still wearing torn and bloodstained clothes.

Mr. Zardari’s exhortations for Pakistan’s unity already seem to fall on deaf ears among some hard-core PPP militants in the province. “We have nothing to lose, and we will fight for our rights,” says Hakin Dad, a PPP veteran in a Karachi suburb who served as a personal bodyguard to Ms. Bhutto’s father in the 1970s. “What we need is separation.”

Link to slideshow: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119972263973472325.html?mod=world_news_promo

Some captions: "The worst of the violence broke out Ms. Bhutto’s native Sindh, a province of 38 million people that includes Karachi, Pakistan’s financial and industrial hub, and the city of Hyderabad. Rioters torched hundreds of government offices, police outposts, railways stations and banks.

At left, a Pashtun driver stands by his burned vehicle in the Sindhi city of Hyderabad."

"Mobs targeted with particular vigor the trucks on Sindhi highways, aware that hardly any of Pakistan’s truckers hail from this province. In Hyderabad, hundreds of carbonized vehicle wrecks, some still smoldering, lined roads in every direction for several days.

At left, Pashtun drivers stranded by their burned truck near Hyderabad."

"It’s now common to hear in Sindh that Ms. Bhutto had been targeted not because of her politics, but simply because she was a Sindhi. The question of Sindhi autonomy is likely to be one of the most burning and troublesome issues that will beset Pakistan in years to come.

At left, a Pashtun family by their burned truck at the entrance to Hyderabad."

"A project to build a dam on the Indus River that’s shared by Punjab and Sindh crystallizes resentment between the the provinces. The plan would divert Indus waters that now flow into Sindh to Punjabi agricultural areas.

Ghulam Murtada Shah, who tills 60 acres near Hyderabad, says the diversion of waters into Punjab has already made the canals leading into his farm go dry. At left, he stands by an empty pond on his farm.

“We Sindhis are treated like slaves here,” he says. “Benazir Bhutto was killed because she wanted equal rights for the Sindhi people. And now we have lost our hope.”