December 12, 2006	Tuesday	Ziqa'ad 20, 1427

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HYDERABAD, Dec 11: The Jeay Sindh Qaumi Mahaz (JSQM) would observe December 14 as a protest day across the province against the ‘enforced disappearance’ of leaders and activists of JSQM including Dr Safdar Sarki and Akash Mallah and other nationalist parties and sale of Sindh's islands.

They party would stage protest demonstrations and hunger strikes on the protest day, Central Organising Committee Chairman Shafi Mohammad Karnani and Organiser Sarfaraz Memon told a news conference at the JSQM media centre in Qasimabad on Monday.

The two leaders said that only recently the federation took over two islands of Sindh and started ejecting local inhabitants to settle outsiders in their place without even bothering to get permission from Sindh government for appearances’ sake.

They described the provincial government’s silence over such excesses as ‘criminal’ even after people’s protest. Dr Sarki and Akash Mallah who raised their voice against injustices had been ‘disappeared’ by the personnel of law enforcement agencies that held them incommunicado, they said.

Mr Karnani said that the organising committee had finished inquiry into Mr Arisar’s allegations and would take a final decision on it in its meeting scheduled for December 15.

He tried to evade a question about Mumtaz Bhutto’s resignation from the chairmanship of Sindh Qaumi Ittehad by saying that perhaps attempts were under way to convert the ittehad into an election alliance. The 1973 constitution was a death warrant for Sindh, he said.

NAUSHAHRO FEROZE: JSQM activists led by district president Ashraf Leghari staged demonstration and observed hunger strike outside the local press club demanding immediate release of Dr Safdar Sarki, Akash Mallah and other nationalist leaders.

JSQM Sindh Organiser Serai Qurban Khuhawar, JSSF Sindh President Kehar Ansari and Sagar Hameed Burdi visited the hunger strikers’ camp and expressed solidarity with them. They demanded that the government release Dr Sarki who had been picked up by the personnel of law enforcement agencies and since then nobody knew of his whereabouts.

KHAIRPUR: JSQM activists erected a hunger strike camp on the Court Road in protest against their leaders ‘enforced disappearance’ and the sale of Sindh’s islands.

The protesters, carrying banners and placards inscribed with demands for recovery of missing political leaders and workers in Sindh and Balochistan, condemned the islands’ sale and ejecting fishermen by force.