On February 3 the Sindh High Court ordered the Karachi commissioner and law enforcement agencies to remove illegal barriers from the streets and submit a detailed report by February 24. There are three days left before the deadline, but not a pole, iron gate, and other kind of hurdles have been removed. It is to be presumed neither have the authorities prepared a detailed report. Everyone knew it would not happen, and that includes the judges who ordered the removal of the barriers.
The Sindh High Court order was for the removal of illegal barriers. Will someone kindly explain what is the definition of legal barriers? As far ordinary citizens are concerned every kind of barrier is demeaning, an insult, creating separatism between a handful of so-called important persons and the nobodies who comprise the remainder of the 22 million Karachiites.
The petitioner before the bench was Rana Faizul Hasan, secretary general of the United Human Rights Commission. He stated 70 percent of roads were blocked. He pointed out that the barriers were not only restricting the movement of ordinary people but also hampered the movement of law enforcers and emergency workers. What it means is that instead of providing security, the barriers are actually causing insecurity.
In Karachi barriers have created a social mentality too. They are status symbols. Nearly every posh community living in a cluster of houses and apartments in which only members of the community may live, put up barriers. The roads inside have become their property as no one is allowed to enter who is 'alien'. In certain gated communities you are not allowed in unless you know the name of a resident. If these are not illegal barriers, what are?
Crime has not abated by putting up road blocks with guards at the entry points. This is especially true in places like Jamshed Town, Gulshan-i-Iqbal, North Nazimabad and Korangi. Barriers are also a statement of power. This is of course most obvious in the case of barriers put up first by the American consulate and followed suit by other foreign consulates with clout, including Japan, Saudi Arabia, the UK. It spawned a fashion among powerful political leaders, such as the Bhuttos, Zardari, Zulfiqar Mirza. Consulates are no longer places of refuge of people in need of political asylum. Consulates no longer have dealing with the public. As for the politicians they are unapproachable. It is a farce that they think of themselves as leaders of the masses. The barriers tell you, in no uncertain way, they only care for themselves.
The law enforcement agencies put up barricades at the slightest hint that the public may want to approach a minister for redressal of some wrong or demand some right. One never knows when and where containers will blossom. Thanks to the dharna in Islamabad, another trend is to put container barricades to contain a street meeting of people protesting one thing or another. As inconvenient as the impromptu barricades are the directions for detour of traffic. The police or rangers directing traffic away from the barricaded roads point towards free streets which will not take you where you actually wish to go. Once I spent 45 minutes trying to find my way to the Karachi Press Club, bumping on pot hole roads, driving through empty plots, going in circles. It was like playing snakes and ladders; chance could bring you back to the starting point or anywhere but the finish.
For commuters on the detours there is no traffic rule which applies. They can drive anywhere they like, even on a footpath, if such is available, in order to get ahead. There is usually slow movement of traffic while cars heat up and road rage, too. If vehicles tailgate then there is a god-awful traffic jam.
On the day the Sindh High Court issued its order for removal of barriers, Commissioner Shoaib Ahmed Siddiqui appeared in court and told the judges that barricades installed outside sensitive installations and consulates did not hinder movement of citizens. In other words he does not care for the masses, only for the security of the foreigners and the sensitive installations.
The petitioner, however was not talking about these barriers, but the hundreds of other barriers put up on streets and thoroughfares. Surely consulates and sensitive installations do not comprise the 70 percent barriers in total, that he mentioned. But the commissioners wasn't focused on the other problems. He could not care less what happened anywhere else in the city.
The closer we get to becoming a democratic nation the further we move away from the basic concept of democracy, which is the right of every citizen to be treated at par with all others no matter how important they may be politically, diplomatically, militarily or ethnically. If the barriers in Karachi, the greatest city of Pakistan, is not a proof of the lack of democratic practice, nothing is.