HYDERABAD / DADU / NAWAB­SHAH: About two scores of people were injured when several vehicles plying on the roads leading to Garhi Khuda Bakhsh Bhutto were pelted with stones by opponents of Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) on Friday.

According to local journalists in Jamshoro, some of the vehicles were part of different caravans of PPP workers and supporters heading for the Bhuttos’ mausoleum, where they intended to participate in the programme organised by the party to mark the 46th death anniversary of PPP founder chairman and executed prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.

Activists and supporters of the Jeay Sindh Mahaz-Riaz (JSM-R) were holding sit-ins at different places as per the party’s scheduled plan to block highways in its sustained campaign, actively backed by other anti-PPP forces, against federal government’s controversial canals project.

It was learnt that anti-PPP speeches made at the venues of the sit-ins had emotionally charged the participants and when they saw the vehicles with PPP flags passing by, they turned violent.

Some of the 20 injured people, almost all PPP supporters, told local journalists that the attackers, raising slogans against the PPP leadership, canals project, corporate farming and other anti-Sindh projects, resorted to pelting stones on moving vehicles. They said the incident took place close to the venue of the sit-in outside the main entrance of the Liaquat University of Medical and Health Sciences (LUMHS).

They said some of them jumped onto some vehicles and tore off PPP flags, and some other snatched and tore off posters, portraits and the banners inscribed with pro-PPP slogans.

Windowpanes of the vehicles were smashed during stone-throwing, they added.

Activists and supporters of various nationalist entities were among those who participated in the JSM-R sit-ins.

Reliable sources in Jamshoro said that anti-PPP activists started raising slogans and pelting stones on the buses when the sit-in outside the LUMHS was about to conclude.

Such a sit-in was also staged near Naseerabad.

Jamshoro SSP Zafar Siddique said “some masked men tried to create disturbances but police brought the situation under control and restored normal flow of vehicular traffic”.

Earlier, speaking at the Jamshoro sit-in, JSM-R leaders Irfan Soomro, Abid Jamali, Haider Cholyani and Sartaj Noohani said that their party rejected corporate farming, new canals project and the Green Pakistan Initiative which, they believed, were aimed at usurping Sindh’s lands and water. Through the canals project, Punjab’s barren lands are to be irrigated at the cost of Sindh’s fertile lands. They declared that they would not allow any new canal to be drawn from the Indus.

Riaz Chandio leads protest in Moro

JSM-R Chairman Riaz Ali Chandio, as part of the party’s anti-canals campaign, led a sit-in at Moro on Friday to block the highway.

Activists and supporters of several other nationalist groups joined in the sit-in, held at the Moro section of the Indus Highway.

Chandio, along with a large number of activists, walked up to two kilometres from Dadu Road to reach the venue of the sit-in.

Other prominent nationalist leaders present there included Dr Niaz Kalani of the Jeay Sindh Qaumi Mahaz-Bashir (JSQM-B).

Speaking to the sit-in participants, Chandio said that as a matter of fact, sufficient water in the country’s rivers was not available for any new canal and, as such, it was not possible at all to spare even a meagre quantum for the six canals planned to be drawn from the Indus.

“This project would ultimately cause millions of people in Sindh to starve to death,” he warned.

He said the subsoil water in Sindh was already hazardous for human health.

Chandio pointed out that the world’s seventh largest delta was dying for want of freshwater. He noted that Badin and Sujawal districts were the worst-affected districts from where families had already started migrating to other places.

The JSM-R chief said that around 7.5 million acres of agricultural lands in Sindh would turn barren if Cholistan and other canals were created.

He accused PPP of being responsible for this project, and said the fragile federal government was still in place just due to the support extended to it by PPP supremo Asif Ali Zardari and chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari.

He said that the Green Pakistan Initiative would also bring colossal damage to Sindh and other parts of the country.

He demanded immediate shelving of all ‘anti-Sindh’ projects.

Dr Niaz Kalani, Nawaz Shah, Illahi Bux Chachar, Kamal Mehar and others also spoke.

Published in Dawn, April 5th, 2025