The Karachi Concerned Citizens' Forum has demanded that the federal and the provincial governments must deliver on their commitments to the citizens of Pakistan, the most important of them being the security of life, livelihood and property. The Karachi Concerned Citizens' Forum organised a demonstration for peace in Karachi outside the Karachi Press Club on Saturday.
The Forum's organiser, Nargis Rehman, former Justice Fakhruddin G Ibrahim, former CPLC chief Nazim F Haji, a former federal Secretary Tasneem Siddiqui, former banker and columnist A B Shahid, Mrs Mehnaz, and a number of people from different walks of life participated in the demonstration.
They chanted slogans against the deteriorating law and order situation in the Pakistan's financial hub and demanded of the government to take step for restoration of peace in the city. They said that Karachi, Pakistan's largest city in terms of population and geographical limits, contributes over 20 percent of Pakistan's GDP and now faces extreme violence which has caused thousands of deaths and crippled its economic activity. "We demand that the Pakistan's government and leadership take urgent immediate steps to end Karachi's wanton killing spree, restore the city's peace, ensure stability, and revive the city's normal life and economic activities", they said.
They demanded implementation of the action plan to save Karachi from total social and economic collapse and said that the government's first priority should be to activate, with full authority and responsibility, all law enforcement agencies, to provide the necessary security to Karachi's beleaguered citizens from criminals of all shades, "be they terrorists, bhatta mafias, or target killers".
They said that responsible and representative civil society groups must be taken on board (as the true stakeholders) when planning the peace strategy for the city. The first step to de-weaponise Karachi, as well as the whole of Pakistan, is to impose complete ban on (the display of) weapons, especially by political party workers. Should the workers of a political party be caught doing so, that party's leadership should be held accountable for this crime, they said.
The party's leadership should ensure that its workers are restrained from every form of criminal violence, be it target killing, damaging or looting public or private property. The miscreants/militants within their party's ranks should be identified and exposed by the party's leadership for appropriate punitive action as per the law of the land.
They also demanded immediate and permanent ban on shutter-down and wheel-jam strikes called by political parties and said that protests and political rallies should be restricted to specifically designated areas in Karachi and under no circumstances be allowed to take place on main thoroughfares and in residential, commercial/industrial areas.
They also demanded that the political wall-chalkings, that incite hatred and violence, should be declared illegal and provincial authorities should be ordered to whitewash all such existing wall-chalkings with immediate effect. They assured the government that Karachi's Concerned Citizens' Forum would fully support government's administration in implementing this action plan to restore normalcy, peace and economic activity in Karachi.