KARACHI: On a day when widespread rallies were under way across Sindh on a call given by various Shia organisations to protest the government’s failure to arrest the culprits of the Jan 30 Shikarpur Imambargah bombing that had left more than 55 people dead, the suicide attack at the Masjid & Imambargah compound in Peshawar during the Juma prayers triggered more such rallies and demonstrations in the province.
The Majlis-i-Wahdat-i-Muslimeen (MWM) on Friday announced three-day mourning across Pakistan over the latest attack on the Shia community. It held the federal government responsible for the frequent attacks against the community.
“To review the post-massacre course of action, Allama Raja Nasir Abbas Jafari, secretary general of the MWM, presided over a hurriedly-called meeting of his cabinet,” said an MWM statement issued in Karachi. “The MWM central cabinet condemned the brutal suicide bombings in Shia mosque in the Hayatabad area of Peshawar. The MWM held federal government responsible for the Shia massacre in the Masjid-i-Imamia and demanded the PML-N government at the Centre and Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif step down.”
The MWM statement said that it would hold mourning congregations and rallies over the next three days. It said the federal and provincial governments were also responsible for the consistent security failures because their inaction against terrorist outfits.The MWM also announced that Sunday would be observed as ‘day of martyrs of Masjid-i-Imamia’ across the country, and called for the holding of demonstrations in all big cities on that day.
As soon as the news of the Peshawar Imambargah bombing spread, protest demonstrations were held in different areas of Karachi, Hyderabad, Sukkur, Jacobabad, Mirpurkhas, Shikarpur, Badin, Umerkot,
Larkana, Khairpur and many smaller cities and towns of Sindh. Several towns, including Jacobabad and Shikarpur, were already closed in response to a protest call by Shia organisations against the Shikarpur bombing.
Trade, business and commercial activities in Karachi, Sukkur, Khairpur, Jacobabad and Shikarpur came to an abrupt closure after TV channels aired live coverage of the Peshawar attack.
In Karachi, a large number of people belonging to Shia sect gathered at the Numaish traffic intersection to hold a protest sit-in over a series of attacks on Imambargahs in recent weeks.
MWM leaders addressed the participants in the sit-in, which led to the closure of M.A. Jinnah Road. Police cordoned off the area for security reasons resulting in traffic jams on all key arteries leading to M.A. Jinnah Road for a few hours.
The situation returned to normal when the traffic was diverted to alternative routes.
Published in Dawn, February 14th, 2015
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