Justice at last?
The arson attack on a garments factory in Baldia, Karachi, on September 11, 2012 was the worst industrial disaster in Pakistan’s history, in which 264 workers, men and women, perished. After eight long years, an Anti-Terrorism Court has finally handed down a verdict that sees two former activists of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) sentenced to death, life imprisonment to four gatekeepers of the factory, and acquittal for four others, including then minister of industries Rauf Siddiqui. It has been an agonising wait for justice for the victims’ families. The sentences include fines and diyatto these families, attracting further jail time in the event they are not paid. The facts of the case show that the owners of the factory, Ali Enterprises, were being subjected to extortion by the MQM cadres for some time. This was not unusual in the days when MQM had Karachi and its citizens by the throat. Reports later revealed a network of extortion (bhatta), torture cells, and murders of anyone who stood in the way of the then dominant MQM, not excluding recalcitrant cadres of the organisation itself. Not a leaf moved in Karachi in those days except according to the will of the then MQM supremo, Altaf Hussain. The arson attack followed the refusal of the owners of Ali Enterprises to comply with the MQM’s demand for Rs 250 million in extortion money or a partnership in the enterprise. The main culprit on the ground was then chief of MQM’s Karachi Tanzeemi Committee Hammad Siddiqui, who has been declared an absconder. Amongst the 400 witnesses who deposed during the trial, the owners of Ali Enterprises denied responsibility for the factory’s doors being locked, which denied the trapped workers exit from the blazing inferno. But their testimony also points the finger at MQM bigwigs like Rauf Siddiqui who lodged an FIR against the owners to pressurise them into silence. The then Governor Sindh Ishratul Ibad stands accused of pressurising the owners to pay Rs 59.8 million via the MQM to compensate the victims’ families. As it turned out, the amount was paid but not a penny reached the intended beneficiaries. Instead, the money was used to buy a plot in Hyderabad.
The murky era of the MQM’s hold on Karachi is well exemplified by this case. General Ziaul Haq’s regime ‘encouraged’ the emergence of MQM as an urban force in the 1980s to neutralise the Pakistan People’s Party’s hold on Sindh. In the process, the MQM proxies turned so vicious that the establishment was forced to carry out suppression campaigns against the party from the early 1990s onwards. Today the MQM lies ‘broken’ into three warring factions and they are a pale shadow of the once mighty Altaf Hussain’s empire. However, for MQM-Pakistan to attempt to distance itself from the Baldia happenings because Rauf Suddiqui has been acquitted or they claim they have cut off all relations with Altaf Hussain just does not hold water. Today’s changed reality cannot nullify the MQM’s responsibility for the Baldia and other acts of cruel terrorism. The justice system’s excruciatingly slow grinding wheels, which took eight years to get to the verdict that could still go through an appeals process in the higher courts, once again reflect the painful reality of the flaws in our creaking judicial set up. Not everyone is satisfied by the verdict. The Ali Enterprises Factory Fire Affectees Association and the National Trade Union Federation, which have been campaigning for the rights of the victims and their families, have expressed dissatisfaction at the verdict, deeming the owners responsible for the tragedy’s high toll of human life because of poor safety and design and the controversial issue (still) of who was responsible for locking the factory’s doors. This may well have been the norm at the factory. When even such a huge tragedy cannot be brought to satisfactory closure after eight years of the investigative and judicial merry-go-round, what hope is there for justice in our society?
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