Daily DAWN, December 8, 1998

Muttahida holds demo against PM
By Our Staff Correspondent

LONDON, Dec 7: Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) activists on Sunday night staged a peaceful demonstration outside the London residence of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to protest against the "state oppression" launched against the Mohajir community in Karachi and to condemn the raids and arrests being made by para-military troops in Mohajir localities.

The protest was timed to embarrass Mian Nawaz Sharif on his arrival at his flats in Central London, but he arrived 100 minutes after the protesters had left the place after a two-hour picketing in shivering cold.

A source said the Pakistan high commission had advised the prime minister's personal staff well in time to delay the departure from New York so as to avoid the protesters.

Around 130 MQM activists and workers, including women and children, arrived in two buses from the party's international secretariat to picket the prime minister's residence in the posh Park Lane area of Central London.

They were well organised and had brought with them a generator as well as tea in flasks.

The police, who had blocked the entire road for the demonstration, allowed the protesters to stand outside the main entrance of the building where the Sharif family owns four flats. However, they were asked by the police not to use any megaphone, as it was purely a residential area. But the police apparently underestimated the capabilities of MQM activists whose vociferous slogans forced many residents of the nearby buildings to come out to see what had suddenly happened in their otherwise peaceful locality of high-rise buildings.

"Terrorist, terrorist: Nawaz Sharif terrorist," they chanted. Carrying tricolour MQM flags, the national flag and big photographs of Altaf Hussain, the protesters also held placards with photographs of mutilated bodies of MQM workers allegedly tortured to death by law-enforcement agencies as well as of some MQM MPAs pictured in police cells.

"Out, out, Nawaz Sharif out", "Butcher, butcher, Nawaz Sharif butcher" and "Mohajir blood will bring revolution," they chanted in a chorus most of the time during their protest. Speaking at the rally, former Sindh health minister Ishrat-ul-Ibad said it was the MQM that had supported Mian Nawaz Sharif to reach the highest office. But, he said, Mr Sharif proved to be a selfish person. "When he achieved his objective, he stabbed us in back. "He warned the prime minister that if theMohajirs can bring him on to the top they are capable of bringing him down as well."

Nusrat Nadeem, another leader of the MQM based in London, said Nawaz Sharif had always stabbed his allies in the back, and recalled how he first ditched the Awami National Party which had supported it in difficult times. And now, he was trying to eliminate the MQM because it had refused to support him on his controversial Shariat Bill, and also because it had opposed the population census results which were manipulated by the government and had not sided with the government on the issue of National Finance Commission award.