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Provincial minister with the ruling Pakistan People’s party sparks protests after diatribe against opposition party The centre of Karachi has been left deserted after 12 people were killed in a night of violence sparked by a government minister’s blazing verbal assault on “wretched” opposition supporters. Zulfikar Mirza, a senior provincial minister with the ruling Pakistan People’s party (PPP), unleashed such an uncontrolled barrage on the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) – a political force most people are afraid to criticise even mildly – that members of his own party had to physically take him away from the microphones at an impromptu press conference. The city of 18 million people, Pakistan’s economic powerhouse, has shut for business, with the city centre deserted and factory workers unable to get to work because public transport was suspended. Markets, banks and shops were shuttered. Dozens of cars were set on fire and shops burnt in the violence. The streets of many poorer residential areas, where MQM supporters live, thronged with angry protesters who burned effigies of Mirza. The two other big cities in southern Sindh province, Hyderabad and Sukkur, were similarly shut down, with MQM supporters out in force. The MQM represents “mohajirs”, speakers of the Urdu language who fled India after partition in 1947, with many settling in Karachi, where they vastly outnumber the indigenous population. The party has a thuggish reputation for its alleged involvement in extortion and other rackets, though it denies connection to any criminality. “For your own sake, for Pakistan’s sake, for Karachi’s sake, stand up and rid us of these wretched people,” Mirza said in his diatribe. “They came to this province when they were hungry and naked and we took them in.” Mirza, who is close to president Asif Zardari, said that if the Urdu speakers wanted to carve their own province out from Sindh, “they will have to step over our dead bodies first”. He also lacerated the party’s leader, Altaf Hussain, who has lived in exile in London for decades, calling him “the biggest criminal”. Separately, the PPP’s interior minister, Rehman Malik, bizarrely claimed that 70 of 100 people killed last week in Karachi, in apparent targeted assassinations of supporters of different political parties, were in fact killed by their “wives and girlfriends”. While the MQM is the biggest political force in Karachi, it faces two rivals with their own violent followings. As well as the PPP, which has a stranglehold on the Lyari district of the city, there is also the Awami National party, which represents the huge ethnic Pashtun population of Karachi, who have moved from the north-west of the country. According to the MQM, the growth of the Pashtun population has led to the “Talibanisation” of Karachi, with extremists creating no-go areas. Clashes between the armed supporters of the three parties periodically sets off tit-for-tat killings that go on for days. At stake are political and criminal fiefdoms. Last year over 1,000 people died in the gang-related violence, the highest figure in 15 years. Even before Mirza’s outburst, poorer parts of Karachi had last week seen running gun battles on the streets, requiring the paramilitary Rangers force to be deployed. In a statement on Thursday afternoon, Mirza apologized, saying that “Urdu-speaking people are my brothers and sisters”. Most supplies for Nato troops in Afghanistan pass through Karachi’s port, where they are loaded on to trucks and sent by road across Pakistan to the border crossings. Pakistan Saeed Shah guardian.co.uk