'Justice for Karachi' campaign to be launched ahead of Imran Khan's address at UNGA

Ahead of Prime Minister Imran Khan's address at the United Nations General Assembly's session, US-based advocacy group, Voice of Karachi (VoK), said it will launch a major campaign to highlight the atrocities and gross human rights violation by Pakistan's state agencies.

In a statement, the Executive Director of VoK, Wasay Jalil, said that as Khan is scheduled to speak at the UN session on September 27, the advocacy group has decided to highlight the atrocities and gross human rights violations in Karachi and other areas of urban Sindh at the hands of Pakist security forces.

Voice of Karachi's awareness campaign would start on 25 September in New York and will be followed by another major campaign on 26 September. These campaigns will run for a week.

Jalil said that his advocacy group has invited the US and international media to cover these campaigns.

Jalil stated that VoK is seeking justice for Karachi and other areas of urban Sindh and urge the United Nations to intervene in order to save millions of Mohajirs in urban Sindh from the systematic persecution by Pakistan.

"We want to tell the United Nations as well as the international community how Pakistan treated Mohajirs, those millions of Muslims who had migrated from India to Pakistan after India's partition in 1947, since the country's inception. Pakistan complains of injustices against Kashmiris but has failed to serve justice to its own non-Punjabi ethnic groups, which include Mohajirs, Pashtuns, and Baloch. These oppressed people have no option but to raise their issues at the U.N. and other international forums," Jalil added.

Jalil, who has served for five years as a mayor of a major Karachi town, said that Karachi is one of the largest and most populous cities in the world.

Karachi has by far been the largest contributor to Pakistan's national exchequer since the country's inception. Pakistan, however, consistently refuses to recognize and resolve even the fundamental issues that the city is facing, and continues to treat it as an occupied territory.

"Systematic mpulation in census figures and gerrymandering by the racist Sindh and federal governments have left more than half the population in urban disenfranchised. A repressive quota system has denied Mohajirs access to professional public educational institutions and government jobs," Jalil said

"Mohajirs have been effectively reduced to third-grade citizens in Pakistan. Any protest, even peaceful, is not permitted against these injustices. Enforced disappearance and extrajudicial killings of Mohajirs are common. Pakistan's Punjabi dominated security forces have killed over 25,000 Mohajirs in Karachi alone since 1992," he pointed out.

( With inputs from ANI )