Report
Islamabad, 7th November 2021 – Hundreds of katchi abadi dwellers, trade unionists, daily wage workers, progressive political workers and students from across the twin cities participated in a protest rally organised by the Awami Workers Party (AWP) on Sunday under against back-breaking inflation, unemployment, inaccessibility of quality education/heath and illegal evictions of the working poor by the CDA and other government agencies. The protestors held banners, red flags and placards demanding a break with pro-imperialist/rich economic policies, state patronage of real estate moguls and the deployment of state repression against working classes and political progressives. Participants beat pots and pans vociferously, tore up utility bills and hung stale bread around their necks to symbolise their economic hardship, while chanting slogans throughout the rally, which snaked through the Aabpara market for the best part of two hours.
Speaking to the protestors, AWP leaders Aasim Sajjad, Alia Amirali, Iqbal Ustad, Rukhsana Qazi, Ahmed Kohistani, Robin Sahotra, Mir Azam and Razzaq Jatt lambasted the PTI regime for totally failing to fulfil its much touted promises of establishing the ‘Ryasat-e-Madina’ and providing 10 million jobs and 5 million homes to the poor. By fully implementing neoliberal policies and catering to the land and other mafias, the regime is in fact depriving more Pakistanis than ever of employment, housing and even the right to life, especially in the form of summary evictions of katchi abadi dwellers. Meanwhile the rest of Pakistan’s feeble bourgeois parties are concerned only with securing a share of governmental power through deals with the establishment. The AWP leaders said that Pakistan’s ruling elite has no coherent programme to end the spiral of economic brutalization and hateful politics. It remains committed to an unsustainable model of resource extraction and geopolitical rents to serve the interests of external patrons, whilst at the same time giving free license to speculative lobbies, contractors and patriarchs at all levels of society to profit from people’s misery and exploit nature without concern for future generations.
Speaking to the protestors, Progressive Students Federation leaders Jamil Khan, Fatima Shahzad and Ikramullah Maseed said that Pakistan’s predominantly young population will only have a bright future if a genuine progressive alternative displaces the status quo. 150 million young people are being fed dreams of upward mobility, some of them making enormous sacrifices to attend college and university where they are subjugated by unaccountable administrations who offer no facilities and substandard education. When they graduate with degrees they can find no jobs and many are left to drive Careems or become daily wage workers. Tooba Syed of the Women’s Democratic Front said that economic hardship is particularly acute on women who are paid even less then men, bear the brunt of suffering when homes are bulldozed and livelihoods squeezed, and are also the victims of patriarchal violence inside brutalized working class households.
The rally concluded with the announcement of a list of demands centering a genuinely radical programme of social and economic redistribution – of land, other natural resources, and in the interests of labour vis a vis multinational capital – to offer the working masses, especially youth, a meaningful alternative to status quo. The party demands restoration of trade and student unions across the country, end to rabid privatization, and a severing of neocolonial relationships with international creditors like the IMF which continue to impose stultifying anti-people conditionalities in the name of economic reform. It particularly demands housing for all by regularizing all existing katchi abadis and rejects the so called Naya Pakistan Housing initiative through which even loans can only be secured by those who have bank accounts and a regular income – a luxury that most katchi abadi residents do not have. The AWP has also vowed to initiate contempt of court proceedings against CDA and other government agencies in the Supreme Court if any more summary evictions are undertaken without offer of alternative housing. The party also slammed the government’s increasing repressive attitude towards progressives, in sharp contrast to the mainstreaming of religious militants like the TLP and TTP – confirmation that the ruling elite continues to weaponize religion to distract from its systematic policy of class war against the poor.
