KARACHI: A Rangers claim that the paramilitary force was arresting the “sector in charges and unit in charges of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement because its Tanzeemi committee was organising a militant wing” was on Sunday rejected by the MQM, which criticised the Rangers’ intelligence and said the body they were talking about had been disbanded long ago.

Apparently, in response to MQM chief Altaf Hussain’s allegations that the Rangers had turned Sindh into an “occupied territory” and they were treating held MQM workers like “prisoners of war”, the Rangers issued a brief statement late on Saturday night claiming that the operation was only targeting criminal elements and not against any political, religious and ethnic group.

It said that the operation was against militant wings of these groups and criminals. However, the Rangers accused the MQM’s Tanzeemi committee of organising a militant wing and said that “therefore its [MQM] sector in charges and unit in charges are being arrested”.

It claimed that those arrested were being provided with their legal rights and produced before “magistrate/court at the earliest”. Some of those arrested had surrendered voluntarily, it claimed.

The MQM took no time in issuing a detailed rejoinder to the Rangers statement in the early hours of Sunday.

It criticised the intelligence network of Rangers and said that no body with the name of Tanzeemi committee existed in the MQM and the one which the party had set up earlier was dissolved long time ago.

The coordination committee of the MQM said in the statement that the Rangers statement was “more than a confessional statement which itself proved that the operation is only being conducted against the MQM”.

It said that there was nothing left to be sure that the aim of the operation was not to eliminate criminal elements in Karachi but it was aimed at crushing the MQM.

It regretted that the Rangers were only targeting the MQM with the support of state power and an unannounced ban was imposed on its activities.

The committee said that the MQM was a law abiding and peaceful political party and it had time and again made it clear that there was no room for criminal elements in it.

It said that the Supreme Court in its Karachi law and order suo motu proceedings had observed that all political and religious parties had militant wings, but the Rangers had not taken action against office-bearers of any other political or religious party, except the MQM.

Commenting on the Rangers claim that they present all held workers in court, the MQM said that it was nothing but a pack of lies and just to misguide the people as the whereabouts of over 50 MQM workers, who had been arrested by the Rangers several months back, were still not known.

They said that the party had provided a list of these workers to Rangers but nothing was told about them.

About the arrested workers, it said that they were being tortured, denied their basic rights and were being presented in court as if they were “prisoners of war”.

Regarding another Rangers claim that some MQM men had voluntarily surrendered, the MQM statement said: “Are the MQM workers torturing themselves in the torture cells; are they blindfolding themselves; and are they putting handcuffs on their own and coming to the courts like animals?”.

The MQM appealed to the Chief Justice of Pakistan and the chief justice of the Sindh High Court to take immediate notice of the current statement of the Rangers because they admitted that they were arresting MQM office-bearers only because of their affiliation with the party.

“Under which section of law or clause of the Constitution becoming an MQM member is a crime?” asked the MQM. “Arresting a person on the basis of this pretext is nothing but mocking the law and the Constitution.”

Published in Dawn, July 6th, 2015

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