February 24, 2025
By Shokat Korai
KARACHI
A scuffle between a protest group and the police brought forth the resentment that had been simmering since some time. The tussle between workers of the Jeay Sindh Qaumi Mahaz (JSQM) and police left at least two cops injured.
The protest demonstration was ended in Karachi on Sunday by Sindhi nationalist parties who chose to march from Sukkur to Karachi against the allotment of land on pretext of a green belt in the province, and the setting up of six canals in Punjab.
It was six new canals on the Indus River, the nationalist parties of Sindh organized protests and blocked highways in different parts of the province.
The protest has been ongoing since January 23, stretching on for a month outside the Karachi Press Club (KPC). The march participants staged a sit-in outside KPC while nationalist leaders addressed the gathering. On Karachi’s main highway, he police tried to stop the march participants from moving forward towards the Red Zone area at Shahrah-e-Faisal, when the police stopped the,.. During this, there was a brawl between the police and the march participants.
In Pakistan, the issue of water scarcity is fast becoming a dispute between the provinces. Civil society has been questioning if these projects can be stopped using forever.
“We have six demands,” says Ali Umrani, the vice chairman of Sindh United Party. “The six canals being constructed should not be built at all; we are also against the allotment of Sindh’s agricultural lands to the military.”
Umrani said that they wanted an end to the growing extremism in Sindh and go home and an immediate end to the enforced disappearances of their political workers, an end to military institutions’ interference in Sindh’s educational institutions. He also called for action against land grabbing.
“If these canals are built, Sindh’s agriculture will be destroyed,” he said.
Dr. Sorath Sindhu, an activist for women’s rights who participated in the march, says that water is life, and these projects have tried to snatch the right to life from the people of Sindh. The rally demanded from the federation and the government to immediately abandon the canal projects including land allotment, which is in the interest of the country.
“As a Sindhi, I participated in this rally because it is against the canals, and in our Sindh, natural resources such as gas and coal are limited,” she said. “Sindh’s people depend on agriculture, for which water is very essential. If there is no water, the identity of the nation will not survive. These programs are equal to the genocide of the Sindhi nation.”