KARACHI, March 18: The Karachi Coordination Committee of the Pakistan People’s Party, which met here at the Bilawal House with Aftab Sha’aban Mirani in the chair, strongly condemned the demolition of centuries-old villages in Karachi and termed the action ‘full of ethnic bias’.

The meeting was attended, among others, by Syed Qaim Ali Shah, Nisar Ahmed Khuhro, Taj Haider, Nafees Ahmed Siddiqui, Nawab Yousuf Talpur and Prof N. D. Khan.

“The way the Sindhi inhabitations in the province are being razed to ground through state terrorism has made it abundantly clear that the ethnic party involved has revived its old scheme of dividing Sindh on ethnic basis, which the PPP will never allow to see the day of life,” the committee remarked.

It alleged that the original inhabitants of Karachi were being brutally uprooted by the city government of the ethnic party, MQM, which was bent upon pushing the Sindhi-speaking people away from the metropolis.

The KCC pointed out that the Sindh Assembly had adopted a resolution, a few months after the MQM took over the city government, directing the provincial government to ensure that no village was demolished. Ironically, however, the Sindh government supplied police force to the city government to carry out such operations.

The committee noted that the centuries-old villages had always been excluded from the development process.