Karachi police move on hunger strikers

Press, 13 May 1986, Page 6

Karachi police move on hunger strikers

NZPA-Reuter Karachi Pakistani troops enforced an indefinite curfew in parts of Karachi yesterday after eight policemen were injured by a hand-grenade and five other people were wounded in a gunfight between two rival groups. Witnesses said that soon after the curfew began at midnight in four districts of western Karachi, , the police arrested nine hunger strikers, including a National Assembly member, Afaq Shahid, and demolished a tent camp they had set up. Police sources said more than 100 people were rounded up during day-long clashes in which arsonists burned. a cinema, two Government buses, three trucks, two bank branches and three shops. Other shops were looted and ransacked, they said. The clashes erupted after a teen-aged-boy was crushed to death in a bus accident, and quickly spread into fighting between two ethnic groups, Pashtuns and Urdu-speak-ing Bihari refugees. The hunger strike, started by Biharis four days ago to press the Government to repatriate

members of their community stranded in Bangladesh, fanned rivalries and tension built up in the area, the police sources said. The eight police were wounded when an unidentified man lobbed a home made hand-grenade at a truck carrying police to an area hit by riots. The Government has several times in the past announced that it was seriously considering repatriation stranded of the more than 250,000 Biharis in Bangladesh. The Biharis, originally from India’s Urdu-speak-ing eastern state of Bihar, migrated to Pakistan’s former Bengali eastern wing, which later became Bangladesh. Witnesses said roads were deserted yesterday but people ignored the curfew on side streets and walked about shouting slogans demanding early repatriation of the Biharis. Troops also took a lenient view when Muslims headed for morning prayers to the mosques, they said. Ministers assured the Biharis that the Government was considering the repatriation question.