During the three days of Eid holidays about three dozens people were drowned at the beaches of Karachi, the majority drowned at a beach run by Military, its commercial outlets and Clifton Cantonment, which are run directly under the Pakistan military. . Four persons drowned at two different beaches that were under the city government.
Courtesy of Express News
The Sea View Beach (SVB) is directly under the control of Defence Housing Authority (DHA) and Clifton Cantonment Board (CCB). The DHA is the housing society project of armed forces of Pakistan which has its own laws and constitution that are treated as superior to Pakistan’s constitution. The DHA and CCB are run by military officers.
The DHA has illegally taken over the control of long strip of SVB and reclaiming the sea land without lawful authority. The huge commercial activities are going on the thousands of acres of illegally occupied land of beach at SVB. The income of commercial activities goes directly to army owned commercial organisations and while the taxes imposed by metropolitan corporations or provincial government of Sindh are not paid; the DHA and CCB run their areas as a parallel state. The vendors who are licensed by the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation are also not allowed to get business from visitors until they get license from the DHA and CCB.
Under these commercial activities the DHA has not made any arrangement to stop the people going to beaches to swim. Section 144 of CRPC was imposed since June, but the DHA, in its arrogance, ignored the law and sped up its business during the Eid holidays.
To date, 26 bodies, mostly younger persons, were recovered from SVB and two bodies from other beaches were recovered, thanks to the sea, which is washing the bodies back on the land, all the other efforts of Pakistan Army and Pakistan Navy have proved to be wasted. The helicopters are flying over the beach just to show that armed forces are helping the citizens; however not a single body was recovered by the efforts of those forces. Eleven others are missing from SVB alone.
It is also learned that the Commissioner of Karachi district was forced to accept the responsibility of negligence of what the civil administration cannot operate in the military land.
Senior police officer Ibadat Nisar said: “The government imposed a ban on swimming in the sea before the start of the monsoon season in June, and police were deployed to implement the ban, but people became violent.” Express News reported that police had attempted to disperse the crowd from the beach on Thursday while people were still flocking to the sea for picnics. The attempt to clear the beach by the police got a little violent.
The Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) urges the government of Pakistan to initiate and immediate inquiry into this incident where more than 36 persons have drowned due to the inaction and failure of duty on the part of the military , its affiliated commercial agents and public security apparatus in the country. We call upon the government to take necessary disciplinary action on those responsible in these institutions, the military and its ally companies for the deliberate and blatant failure to prevent these deaths. The maintenance of public beaches should be handed back to civilian control where adequate safety measure could be ensured.
