Demolition drive-affected, activists demand alternative homes

Terming the ongoing demolition drive “anti-poor” and “anti-working class”, a large number of affected people as well as rights activists took part in a march called ‘Mujhe Mera Ghar Dou Rally’ along the three-kilometre-long track from Quaid-e-Azam Colony to Wahid Colony.The rally was organised under the banner of ‘Karachi Bachao Tehreek’ (KBT), demanding that the government immediately stop the anti-encroachment operation and respectably relocate all those affected by it.The Awami Workers Party (AWP), the Women Democratic Front, the Progressive Students Federation, the Aurat Haq and progressive individuals were a part of the protest rally that was organised to express solidarity with the victims of demolitions carried out in connection with the Karachi Circular Railway project, depriving people of their livelihoods, homes, schools and right to shelter.The protesters shouted slogans for “alternative homes in return for demolished properties”, to “stop anti-poor demolitions until provision of alternative homes” and for “basic right to shelter as ensured by the country’s constitution”.KBT convener Khurram Nayyar said the protesters condemn the current demolition drive taking place in squatter settlements for the KCR project. “We believe that this drive has an anti-poor and anti-working class bias.”He claimed that the drive is driven by “corrupt interests using elitist and neo-liberal notions of development, progress and cleanliness as a justification for an extremely violent wave of demolitions”.He said that these are acts of “targeted urban erasure and destruction that are violently re-engineering the public spaces of the city in the interest of private profit”.In claiming to restore the city to its “former glory”, this drive is destroying the very conditions of survival for a vast majority of Karachi’s residents who sustain the city’s economy, he added.Human rights activist and KBT co-organiser Qurrat Mirza said that these demolitions are rendering over 4,000 families without shelter, and women and children have to suffer the most because of it. “The city’s development drive is giving birth to a humanitarian crisis of the worst nature, which should be strongly condemned and resisted.”AWP member and another KBT co-organiser Fawad Hasan said that the much-lauded Karachi development drive initiated by the government is an act of pushing the marginalised communities out of the city.He said that these very people who are being rendered homeless are the ones who established this city. “The drive hints at nothing but the marginalised communities being pushed further to the peripheries so that the city can only be home to the ruling elite and no one else.”He demanded that the people affected by the demolitions be provided alternative homes within the city, as this concerns their livelihoods and ultimately their right to life.

from The News International - Karachi https://ift.tt/2SJv3Bj