KARACHI: Saima had to cut her trip to Punjab short and take the first train back in May. She received a disturbing phone call from her sister Fauzia; the house she shared with her husband and children in Mujahid Colony, had been razed to the ground on orders of the federal and provincial governments — to give way to the Karachi Circular Railway (KCR) which has not been functional since the early 1990s.

In May, the Supreme Court gave the Pakistan Railways a little over two weeks to clear 50 feet on both sides of the KCR track. Within hours of the order, a joint operation with the district administration kicked off in Karachi’s Central and East districts to demolish homes they considered to be ‘encroaching’ on the railway property.

Soon after residents of Ghareebabad, Mujahid Colony, Moosa Colony, 13-D and other areas where the circular railway tracks are laid down held protests across the city.

KARACHI: Saima had to cut her trip to Punjab short and take the first train back in May. She received a disturbing...

Residents claimed they weren’t given any notice to vacant nor did the government reach out to them. They only learnt that they would lose their homes when the bulldozers arrived.

“We were all asleep when I heard banging out. Men told us to get out of the way so they could demolish a part of our house that was falling on their property. My children were orphaned last year when their father died. Today, the state has orphaned them again by literally taking away our roof,” said Nayyar, a mother of three.

Since the front of her house was demolished, Nayyar claims that no one had been able to go to the bathroom to relieve themselves or shower. For the last couple of days, her children have been sleeping on the remains of the train tracks.

“How can they expect us to defecate in public? Are we animals? They didn’t even think twice about how we will live here. Since they brought my house down, we haven’t even had electricity, water or gas. All the lines are cut. Whatever food my neighbour manages to make, she shares with us otherwise we were left here to die,” she added.

One morning in early June, said Shazia, a bulldozer was parked outside her house in Mujahid Colony. Theirs was the first one in the neighbourhood to be partially demolished.

“I didn’t know what to do or where to go. The men outside just kept telling me to stay back or run out without any of my belongings. My children were asleep. How could I leave them there? My mother-in-law moved to the neighbourhood nearly 50 years ago. Why did no one have an issue then? They didn’t even let her get out. They didn’t give us enough time to do anything. If they had at least given us a day or even an hour, we could have cleared the place or found alternate accommodation,” she said, adding that some men did come to the area six months ago to mark their homes but no one informed them about what was going to happen.

“I have a teenage daughter…what am I supposed to do? Make her sleep on the street with the dogs?” she added.

Another woman from Mujahid Colony told Dawn that her daughter, who is almost 18, was two and a half years old when she last heard train on the KCR tracks. “It used to help her fall asleep,” she said, questioning how anyone can call them encroachers, “we didn’t take the land. If they had a problem, why didn’t they say so 40 years ago when my mother-in-law moved her?”

Across the road in Wahid Colony men who claimed to work for the Railways arrived at Abdul Rasheed’s house in Wahid Colony around 10am. “My family and I were asleep inside. They put a mark on the house, told us to leave everything where it was because they had to raze our home as it was “encroaching on their property”.

Fighting for a home

Recently, at a protest outside the Karachi Press Club, organised by the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan along with the Aurat Foundation, Pakistan Institute of Labour Education and Research (Piler), Urban Resource Centre, Shehri and Urban Lab Karachi, affected residents urged the government to stop the demolition of their homes and help relocate them instead.

A protester said that he doubted if the circular railway could be revived as it didn’t even exist in some place — for example the tracks near the Matric Board office are now part of the Green Line project.

Talking to Dawn, Farhat Parveen, executive director of Now Communities, said: “What happened with the KCR was that there was a case…and they took it to the apex court which basically ruled that the residents should be resettled in a year but the area should be vacated in 15 days. Within a few days, houses [along the KCR route] were being demolished. As yet, nothing has been done about relocating the affected.”

According to Piler’s Karamat Ali, the solution is quite simple — find a humane way to relocate the affected people.

“First of all, I think the government, judiciary and civil society need to sit down and actually define what encroachment is. Look at what’s been going on — anyone can call anything encroachment,” he said while talking to Dawn.

“Take Gandhi gardens and the market around it for example. People didn’t just set up shop there. They were given permission to do so by the KMC. Years later someone said this was encroachment and forced them out. How is this fair? The KMC needs to be held responsible for this, not the shopkeepers,” he added.

Talking about the KCR route, Mr Ali said that what had happened was an atrocity.

“The court passed an order to empty the area in 15 days and relocate people in a year…what are they supposed to do meanwhile…the circular railway has been non-functional for years, it won’t just start up again in a month. There are more humane ways of doing this…we need to discuss possibilities with the affected and stakeholders,” he added.

Published in Dawn, July 6th, 2019