KARACHI: It took several hours to the ‘freedom march’ of the Jeay Sindh Qaumi Mahaz to reach Tibet Centre on Sunday but the congregation lasted less than an hour after a solo speech by the party’s young leader and funeral prayers for the slain JSQM activists.

Officials and party leaders kept mum over the reason behind signing off so early a cardinal event they had taken pains to create a momentum for. Before the abrupt end, the marchers were diverted to a new route from the official one over what was described as security concerns.

The ‘freedom march’ had kick-started in the afternoon from Gulshan-i-Hadeed with JSQM activists and supporters boarding scores of buses, trucks, cars and motorbikes to converge at Tibet Centre.

The march has become a regular feature since 2012, but the Sunday’s event turned into a protest against the mysterious kidnapping and assassination of Maqsood Qureshi, paternal uncle of the JSQM’s young leader Sanaan Qureshi, and party activist Salman Wadho.

Their charred bodies were found in a torched car near Bhiria Road town in Naushahro Feroze district on Friday. The party leadership said they were kidnapped and gunned down before being torched miles away from the place where they had gone missing. A delegation of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement participated in the march and later in the funeral prayers as the only political party with representation in parliament.

Many leaders and cadres of several nationalist parties of Sindh were part of the show, which included the Sindh United Party, Sindh Taraqqi-pasand Party and factions of several groups, which were once part of the late G.M. Syed’s Jeay Sindh Tehreek.

The party leaders and participants said it was a historic event and ‘the biggest show ever organised by a nationalist party’.

Security officials, who were guarding the march and the meeting venue, put the number of participants in “tens of thousands” while the organisers insisted the number was in “hundreds of thousands”.

Officials said they had deployed 5,000 policemen to guard the event. All the arteries approaching M.A. Jinnah Road were closed for the public for security reasons save the area connecting the Shahrah-i-Quaideen from where vehicles and pedestrians were allowed to join the procession.

It was a tough day for the police and Rangers as several parties and groups had organised rallies and meetings in connection with Pakistan Day.

Motorists were told to park their vehicles hundreds of metres away from the venue and walk to the venue.

Many participants were holding placards and banners inscribed with slogans against the provincial and federal governments and chanting slogans against the ruling parties and the “agencies”.

Sanaan Qureshi, who was the only speaker, said Sindh, which contributed more than 70 per cent revenue to the country’s exchequer, was helplessly witnessing its children die from hunger.

He stared in the direction of the ambulances carrying the bodies of the slain activists and said: “Sindh is punished for its love for peace. We offer them peace and they gift us violence. It is not acceptable.”

He spoke about the challenges to the native population from the influx of “outsiders” into Sindh and said addressing the United Nations and the Western world: “You can find the Punjabi Talibans and Pakhtun Talibans but you could never find a Sindhi Taliban…”

He hinted at certain “secret elements” who were ‘constantly targeting’ Sindh to push it down the abyss of violence. People speaking Sindhi and Urdu were permanent inhabitants of Sindh and both should join hands to save “our mother from the enemies having sinister plans to divide it”. “We will never allow Sindh to be divided. Mother cannot be divided”, he said.

Later, the funeral prayers were offered and then the organisers announced the end of the programme and asked the participants to disperse peacefully.

Party leaders said the bodies had been dispatched to Sann, the town of their ideologue the late G.M. Syed before being buried in Ratodero.