MQM bulldozed: offices razed, sealed

A total 196 offices of the party have been sealed and a selected few bulldozed as part of the crackdown on the party after the ‘anti-Pakistan’ remarks of its self-exiled leader Altaf Hussain sparked nation-wide outrage.

ed to dismantle or seal those offices of the party which helped unscrupulous elements or created fear among the general public.

In another significant development, giant posters of Altaf Hussain placed for decades were removed from the prominent Mukka Chowk — a place close to the MQM headquarters NineZero — on Thursday.

The party strongly reacted to the removal of its founding chief’s posters from different areas of the city and warned that the move could lead to an “irreparable loss”. It claimed that “tolerance and intelligence” demonstrated by the MQM-Pakistan after the recent political crisis had managed to control the situation to a large extent.

“But these acts [removal of Altaf Hussain’s posters and demolition of party offices] are sabotaging all these efforts. This could lead to an irreparable loss, which is a source of serious concern for the MQM coordination committee,” the party said in a statement.

The situation was no different in Hyderabad where posters, banners and panaflexes carrying Hussain’s picture were removed in different parts of the city by anti-encroachment staff under the supervision of law enforcement personnel.

Apart from growing challenges and criticism in Pakistan, the MQM is likely to face the same situation in the UK where the British legislators had already approached the government, questioning its lack of action against the party.

British-Pakistani parliamentarians such as Baroness Syeda Warsi and Lord Ahmed are taking a strong line on the issue on social media. Increasingly, MPs are writing to senior UK officials, asking why, despite years of investigations, no action has been taken against the party. “Why we have not proscribed MQM as a terrorist organisation?” wrote Naz Shah, Labour MP for Bradford. In a letter to Home Secretary Amber Rudd, she also asked: “Why, despite the recent conviction of hate preacher Anjem Chaudhry, British police have not launched any investigation into the incitement of violence by Altaf Hussain on British soil against Pakistan?”

In another letter, Birmingham MP Khalid Mahmood asked both Amber Rudd and Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson why the British government had not taken any action against Hussain. “I strongly believe,” he wrote, “that British citizens should not be using the United Kingdom as a political base to incite violence against countries that the United Kingdom is allied with, such as Pakistan.”