May 5, 2005	Thursday	Rabi-ul-Awwal 25, 1426

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QUETTA, May 4: Ataullah Kurd, ex-provincial leader of the MQM, and Abdullah Achakzai, former central secretary of the MSF, went on a hunger strike unto death on Tuesday evening and announced that their fast would continue until the Baloch Students Organization (BSO) chairman, Dr Imdad Baloch, and his seven colleagues who were arrested by the Karachi police were released.

Speaking at a press conference in the press club here on Tuesday, Mr Kurd and Mr Achakzai, who have already completed a four-day token hunger strike, strongly criticized the MQM leadership’s silence over atrocities meted out to BSO members by the Sindh government.

The former Rabita committee member of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement, referring to MQM leader Altaf Hussain’s statement that if a military operation was launched in Balochistan than his party would quit the government in the centre and Sindh, said that but now when the Karachi police has detained students the MQM was reluctant to condemn the arrests.

Mr Kurd and Mr Achakzai asserted that though they have political differences with BSO leaders yet their protest was purely on humanitarian grounds to express solidarity with the aggrieved families, besides the MQM manifesto was committed to support oppressed people.

They, while demanding the resignation of Sindh home minister who belonged to the MQM, stated that the minister who was responsible for the police action in that province was behind the excesses against the BSO leadership.

The hunger strikers, responding to a question as to how could they claim that the Karachi police had apprehended the students, said the residents of the locality from where Dr Imdad and others were arrested were witness to the fact that a large contingent of the Karachi police raided the house and arrested them.