Karachi: “Zia Lanjar are you Ziaul Haq,” social and environmental activist Masood Lohar said, expressing his disgust over how the Sindh home minister Lanjar handled a protest march to promote tolerance in Sindh, the southeastern province of Pakistan which is famed in South Asia for being a land of tolerance. Lohar mentioned the Gen. Ziaul Haq name as the dead U.S. backed Pakistani dictator was responsible for promoting Islamic extremism in the now failing state.

The march was being held to protest the police and Sindhi clerics killing of Dr. Shahnawaz Kunbhar and burning his body last month in Umerkot and the Sindh government’s failure to arrest the culprits.

One video from Sunday afternoon showed lawyer Romasa Jami (daughter of intellectual Jami Chandio) being tossed by policewomen into a Sindh police van; another video showed Sindh national singer Saif Samejo being roughed up by police and is semi-naked after his shirt was torn by policemen; yet another video showed trade union leader Nasir Mansoor and human rights defender Khizar Qazi in a tussle with policemen.

Home minister Lanjar belongs to the Pakistan People’s Party which is now headed by President Asif Ali Zardari. One of Zardari’s closest aides, former Pakistan ambassador to the U.S., Senator Sherry Rehman, apologized for the police high handedness. She tweeted that she was told that Tehreek Labbaik Pakistan— a radical Islamist group— was advancing from the other side and the police were on hair trigger alert after the recent attacks on foreigners and the advise to not protest until the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (S.C.O.) was over, but still, the situation could have been handled differently.

The S.C.O., led by China and Russia, seeks to counterbalance the economic and political weight of the West; by the “recent attacks” Rehman meant the October 6 killing of Chinese experts by a suicide bomber of the Baloch Liberation Army.

“Many of us are sorry and shamed,” said Rehman, daughter and niece of two highly respected Sindhi intellectuals who herself was put on the hit list of religious fanatics 11 years ago for trying to reform the blasphemy law.

But assurances of the liberal Chivas Regal whiskey-loving woman senator may not have much value as her P.P.P. has not taken any action against member of parliament, Pir Ameer Shah Jeelani, who garlanded the police officers who killed Shaheed Shahnawaz Kunbhar in a fake encounter and took part in an Islamist rally to defend the killing.

Most policemen who beat up the peaceful Sindhi peace marchers in Karachi are from the dominant Punjab province.

“Saif Samejo is a musician, singer, songwriter, environmentalist and a fine, kindhearted individual, Romasa Jami Chandio is a brilliant lawyer, member of Sindh Bar Council, a human rights defender and …. one of the brightest minds of Pakistan. Sindhoo Nawaz Ghanghro is a human rights’ activist, environmentalist, a very vocal feminist and Dr. Sindhu Sorath is a medical doctor, an activist of minority rights, a feminist and has been working against the forced conversions and marriages. These are among several other peaceful demonstrators who were trying to raise their voices against the intolerance and violence,” London-based Sindhi journalist Javed Soomro, who works for BBC, said on Facebook.

“Yes, against intolerance violence and what they received? Intolerance and violence by the police and Sindh administration,” Soomro deplored.

Human rights defender Khizar Qazi and trade union leader Nasir Mansoor scuffle with police.

The Sindh government even arrested Sindhi nationalist leaders in other Sindh towns. Heavy police was deployed at the toll plazas to stop participants from going to Karachi for the Sindh Tolerance March.

The commissioner of Karachi used an antiquated law against freedom of assembly that the British enacted in 1861 in India to ban any gathering of four or more people.

The premier Human Rights Commission of Pakistan expressed concerns over the Sindh government action. It said at least 37 protestors (including women) associated with the Sindh Rawadari March have been arrested by the Karachi police while attempting to hold a peaceful assembly to demand justice for the murder of Dr Shahnawaz Kunbher. The police have also attempted to arrest HRCP chairperson Asad Iqbal Butt…

“The Sindh Rawadari March includes progressive voices from across the province, Sindh, including human rights defenders, trade unions and feminist movements, whose right to protest is protected by the Constitution. Those arrested must be released unconditionally,” the H.R.C.P. demanded.

Sindh police also tear-gassed and arrested radicals belonging to Tehreek Labbaik Pakistan (T.L.P.) who took to the streets to counter the march for tolerance. These radicals are supporting the police for the extrajudicial killing of Dr. Kunbhar on September 19 in what the Sindh government has admitted was a fake encounter. According to Dawn newspaper, one T.L.P. activist was killed and 70 arrested after pitched battles with the police.

Pakistan’s spy service Inter-Services Intelligence (I.S.I.) did not allow the government to ban the T.L.P. but instead helped broker a deal between the civilian government and the T.L.P. in 2017. At the time, the military also publicly gave cash money to the T.L.P. radicals. The move was criticized by former premier Nawaz Sharif, who at the time said such support emboldens the extremists.

And though the Rawadari Committee took two weeks to prepare for the tolerance march, the T.L.P. succeeded in bringing out a much bigger crowd in its march at a short notice of one day. The reason is there are more than 450 mosques, which serve as offices to promote a radical agenda, in Karachi alone.

Barrister Mustafa Mahesar agreed that the T.L.P. brought out a larger crowd. “They have the backing of the state, government, religious parties, intel services. In this atmosphere the coming out of nationalists is a big victory,” Mahesar said. He said the extremists felt the heat as the sons and daughters of the soil confronted them in defense of the secular soul of Sindh.

Some folks in Sindh were unhappy with the main organizer Sindhoo Nawaz Ghangro for failing to show up at the Teen Talwar (Three Swords) roundabout and instead holing up at the Karachi Press Club. Former jailed communist, now lawyer, Shabbir Shar claimed that Ghanghro met with minister Lanjar, a night earlier, and assured him she would stay at the K.P.C.

Out of total 168 seats of Sindh assembly, as many as 115 belong to the Pakistan People’s Party, whose main leader is President Asif Ali Zardari. Baring the eleven years of Gen. Ziaul Haq’s military rule July 5, 1977 to August 17, 1988 the P.P.P., which mainly represents Sindhi feudal lords, has ruled over Sindh since 1971, or 42 years.

But though the Bhuttos had both charisma and family wealth since decades, Zardari lacks charisma and allegedly made his money through government wheeling and dealing. According to Celebrity Net Worth, Zardari far surpassed his deceased wife Benazir Bhutto in his net worth ($1.8 billion). For this reason he is hated by Sindh masses as a “real villain.”

Zardari was also hated by his brother in law Murtaza Bhutto and many people suspect Zardari played a role in his assassination, allegedly by Pakistan’s Military Intelligence. Former dictator the late Gen. Pervez Musharraf also accused Zardari of killing Murtaza Bhutto.

On his first visit to the U.S. after the killing of twice premier Benazir Bhutto, her husband and then president as he is now, Asif Ali Zardari, failed to make a good impression on Americans. An anstute observer felt he was shedding crocodile tears. They even felt disgusted about his lack of table manners: he touched a bun as the bread basket was being passed around at dinner time, but did not pick it up saying, “Not warm.”

Even further back 50 years ago circa 1974 this writer’s elder brother grabbed Zardari by his collar at a party in Karachi when he was violating the physical space of now famous calligraphist Ruheena Malik. At the time, Zardari’s main fame was that he was the son of the Bambino cinema owner.

In the 1980s, the same Zardari was roughed up on two separate occasions by Balochistan marble magnate Zafar Zehri and his brother-in-law Nawabzada Salim Bugti— Zehri and Bugti wives were sisters, daughters of late Senator Nabi Bakhsh Zehri. On both occasions he was saved from further beatings by the intervention of his classmate at Karachi Grammar School, with whom he used to share a desk, now deceased Shahid Mustikhan (a cousin of this scribe).

Even at the Cadet College in Petaro— reputed to be one of the main centers of homosexuality in Sindh— Zardari was known for his passivity. His best buddy from those days, now estranged, Zulfikar Mirza, has said on record he knows more about Zardari than his deceased wife Bhutto.

It was Zardari’s mother Timmy Zardari friendship with Begum Nusrat Bhutto that changed his fortunes by virtue of his arranged marriage with Benazir Bhutto, who was two years older than him— he was 31 and she was 33 at the time of their wedding.

There is near unanimous consensus among a big chunk of Sindhis that Zardari is one of the worst things to happen to Sindh.