HYDERABAD: The Jeay Sindh Rahbar Committee, a conglomerate of five nationalist parties, announced on Wednesday staging a rally in Hyderabad on Nov 26 to press the government for expelling illegal immigrants.

The committee, which held a meeting with Jeay Sindh Mahaz-Riaz chairman Riaz Ali Chandio in the chair, said that the rally would also focus on other issues like occupation of Indus River and lands, unemployment and exploitation of Sindh’s resources. The rally would culminate at local press club after starting from Shahbaz building.

Chandio informed the meeting that it was in Gen Zia’s regime when Afghanis started settling in every nook and corner of Sindh under the government’s patronage and conspiracy.

He said that it had ruined everything in the province and since then people had been facing illegal arms and drug culture in Sindh and unusual rise in crimes.

Now that the government had itself decided that Afghans’ presence was detrimental to the country and a decision had been taken to repatriate them, they were being expelled from Islamabad and Punjab and even from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa but Sindh rulers were not ready to expel the immigrants, especially Afghans, he said.

He clarified that as a nation Afghans were respectable to them but still they should be sent back to their country and the government should implement its decision.

The meeting said that the lands should remain with farmers as they belonged to them and called for distribution of farmland among landless peasants.

The meeting was attended by leaders of the member parties of the committee besides JSM-R’s, Dr Niaz Kalani of Jeay Sindh Qaumi Mahaz-Bashir, Aslam Khairpuri and Fatah Channa of JSQM-Arisar, Nawaz Khan Zaunr of Jeay Sindh Qaumi Party and others.

JSM-R slams govt

In Thatta, JSM-R activists blocked a section of the National Highway here on Wednesday to protest against settlement of illegal immigrants, mostly Afghan nationals, in the province and the provincial government’s failure to deport them.

The party’s chairman Riaz Chandio and vice chairman Nawaz Shah Bhadai, who led the protest, termed the government efforts to expel foreign citizens “unsatisfactory” and said succeeding governments kept accommodating non-natives in Sindh.

Riaz Chandio claimed that around five million Afghans were still living in the province and they were involved in heinous crimes. “The Afghan nationals are involved in trafficking arms and contraband narcotics,” he said, adding they were playing with the future of Sindh.

Published in Dawn, November 23rd, 2023