NEW YORK, July 1: More than a dozen Sindhi political groups rejected on Sunday all plans to divide Sindh and also opposed the government’s plan to create another mega city in the province.

“Sindh is the historic motherland of the Sindhi nation since millennia; we believe in the integrity of Sindh and its geographical division is unacceptable to Sindhis under any circumstances,” said a joint statement issued after a meeting in New York.

“We condemn all the conspiracies being waged against the integrity of Sindh.”

The joint declaration of 14 Sindhi nationalist parties, diaspora forums and civil society organisations condemned “the ongoing human rights violations in Sindh and the systematic denial of social, political, and economic rights of Sindhis”.

The 28th annual convention of the Sindhi Association of North America brought together leaders like Abdul Qadir Magsi, Ayaz Latif Palejo, Zulfikar Halepoto, Shuhab Usto, Naseer Memon and others to this US city to contemplate a future plan for protecting historic and political rights of their province.

The parties that participated in this meeting included Sindh Progressive National Alliance, Awami Tehreek, Sindh Taraqi Pasand Party, Sindh United Party, Sindhi Sangat Middle East, International Sindhi Women’s Organisation, Sindh Democratic Forum, Indus Peoples’ Forum, Sindhi Association of North America, World Sindhi Congress, World Sindhi Institute and Sindhi Sangat United Kingdom.

The participants noted that 65 years after Pakistan’s creation, Sindh was still deprived of autonomy and the governance of its own affairs and had “become a veritable colony of the Punjabi establishment”.

The current composition of a centralised state, the meeting noted, had made Pakistan “undemocratic, theocratic, and unstable which had become a threat to the global security”.

The meeting noted that Sindhi and other major languages of Pakistan had always been discriminated against and demanded that all major languages — Sindhi, Baluchi, Pashto, Seraiki and Punjabi — be declared the national languages of Pakistan.

The participants complained that policies of the Pakistani state had been designed to render Sindhis into a minority in their own homeland.

The orchestrated influx of populations from other provinces as well as outside the country since 1951 and flawed house census of 2010 had disenfranchised native Sindhis, they added.

They demanded a new census under the supervision of an international body.

Rejecting the proposed Zulfikarabad city in south Sindh, the meeting pointed out that the plan “negates all criteria for sustainable and judicious development and will pose a further demographic threat to Sindh. The project of Zulfikarabad must be cancelled”.

The participants noted that Sindh had been deprived of its due share of water resources since the last five decades. This had shattered the agricultural economy of Sindh and resulted in ecological devastation of the Indus Delta region.

They pointed out that even the Water Accord of 1991 which went against Sindh’s interest, was being violated.