Chowrangi

This post is collective archive of sound and noise of Karachi, from May 12, 2007 onwards. It will be updated periodically.

Running Karachi, From London: Leading British newspaper Telegraph comments on Altaf Hussain.

He said he had called for peace. But as tens of thousands of his followers sat cross-legged in reverential silence as they listened to their leader’s telephonic address relayed by loudspeakers, in another street armed MQM activists fired directly into the crowds of opposition protesters.

Mr Hussain is one of the Indian subcontinent’s more unusual leaders. His political addresses by telephone have been known to last up to four hours, while a Western diplomat in Pakistan described the MQM as “something out of Chicago - nobody leaves the party”.

While Mr Hussain promotes the party as a secular cause and courts the middle-class vote, his supporters are known to extort a goonda, or thug, tax from Karachi businesses.

Mr Hussain, who once drove a taxi in Chicago for a living, micro-manages the MQM with acute attention to detail.

The movement runs on Greenwich Mean Time with his ministers in Pakistan fielding hour-long telephone calls into the early hours.

When asked why Mr Hussain was not deported to Pakistan before he was granted citizenship, a British diplomat said: “He has not committed a crime on British soil.”

• 12 May 2007: A Black Day in History of Pakistan
• Sinking Karachi
• MQM on backfoot (BBC Urdu)
• ‘No-go areas’ emerging in western part of metropolis
• Victims of Malir Halt point finger at SHO
• Geo TV Website Hacked
• Karachi Riots: Wikipedia Entry
• A TT to my forehead and a press card in my pocket

Source: KMB

Source: Jamal Shamsi

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