MQM sets a date for the streets
Muttahida Qaumi Movement Pakistan has announced a campaign for new provinces across the country and said it will move in a large convoy toward Shahrah-e-Faisal on 29 November, the last Sunday of the month. Party chair Dr Khalid Maqbool Siddiqui told a general workers’ meeting at the KMC Ground in PIB Colony, Karachi, that MQM would lead the drive and take to the roads for public rights.
He argued that new provinces should be created where people demand them and where population size makes them necessary. In his view, the strongest case in Pakistan lies in Sindh’s urban areas, which he described as the place of greatest need right now.
What Siddiqui told workers
Addressing questions about where such a province would sit, Siddiqui said his community had brought its share of land and had given up property in India in Pakistan’s name. He also claimed that abandoned properties left by non-Muslims in Pakistan belong to them in law. Those claims were his alone and were not independently confirmed in the available material.
He said that as soon as the convoy sets off, every route toward Shahrah-e-Faisal will be blocked. Pakistan, he added, was watching MQM, and supporters were urging the party to step forward. He warned opponents of the new provinces demand that MQM was coming to confront them and would make November hard for those he called oppressors.
Recalling earlier violence against Mohajirs—including the Hyderabad killings of 30 September 1986 and the Sohrab Goth and Qasba Aligarh incidents—he said the movement had not stopped. Assemblies, he argued, need MQM more than MQM needs assemblies, and the party’s aim is to push power down to ordinary people. Further decisions on the campaign, he said, would come at the next gathering. Workers present raised their hands in support of the nationwide demand.
Other leaders’ messages
Senior leader Waseem Akhtar said the meeting covered only District East workers, not the whole of Karachi, and invited Bilawal Bhutto Zardari to see the turnout for himself. Karachi, he claimed, was reconnecting with MQM, and a slogan raised there would reach Islamabad.
Farooq Sattar framed the case as one for Pakistan’s 260 million people who, he said, face ongoing injustice. He argued that the 18th Amendment (a major constitutional change that shifted powers to the provinces) had not lifted growth, and that education, health, roads and even garbage collection remained poor. The four provinces, he said, had become a partnership of a few hundred families, and more administrative units should be created in all four on administrative grounds, not language.
He accused the Pakistan Peoples Party of wrecking Sindh over the past 18 years—an opposition claim—and said Pashtuns, Baloch, Gilgitis, Baltis and other Karachi residents want a separate administrative unit. That demand, he insisted, is not against Sindhi culture or language; people would still wear the Sindhi topi, ajrak and Jinnah cap. A full stop, he said, should fall on corruption and street crime, not on the call for new units. He also asked what waderas and jagirdars had delivered for Karachi, Larkana, Sukkur, Mirpurkhas and Hyderabad.
Timeline: what has happened so far
- 30 September 1986: Siddiqui cited the Hyderabad killings of Mohajirs as part of the community’s hard history.
- Past years (undated in the speech): He also recalled the Sohrab Goth and Qasba Aligarh incidents as earlier shocks that did not halt the movement.
- Workers’ meeting, PIB Colony, Karachi: MQM announced it will lead a new provinces campaign and use the gathering as the start of political alignment.
- 29 November: The party says a convoy will leave for Shahrah-e-Faisal; Siddiqui warned that routes to that road will be blocked once it moves.
Aasan alfaaz mein
MQM ne naye soobon ki tehreek ka elaan kiya hai. 29 November ko Karachi mein Shahrah-e-Faisal ki taraf qaafila nikalega. Party ka kehna hai ke Sindh ke shehri ilaaqon ko naye soobe ki zyada zaroorat hai. Us din rastoon ke band hone se aam logon ki aamad-o-raft mutasir ho sakti hai.
