KARACHI: Pakistan’s first lawmaker from the Sheedi minority is on a mission to fight centuries-old discrimination against her community of African descent, saying it has been held back by entrenched racism.
“Being penalized for something that is beyond our control — our black skin — is a reality all Black people face every day in big and small measures in every country,” said Tanzeela Ume Habiba Qambrani, a member of the Sindh provincial legislature.
“The majority brown skin community considers itself the white community of America and superior to us,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by phone from the southern Badin district, where many Sheedis live.
Many of Pakistan’s Sheedi people — whose numbers are unclear due to widely differing estimates — are descendants of East Africans who were brought to South Asia as slaves or soldiers by Arab traders.
Qambrani, 41, who traces her own roots back to Tanzania, lodged a protest resolution in the provincial assembly against a “wave of racism,” condemning last month’s killing of Black American George Floyd in Minneapolis police custody.
“This House strives to nip the scourge of racism in the bud through this resolution and aims at seeing our society free of such inhuman tendencies,” her letter read.
Persistent negative stereotypes about the Sheedis in Pakistan limit the community’s educational and employment prospects, keeping many in poverty, Qambrani said.
“We are considered ‘jahil’ (ignorant) and ‘jungli’ (wild) and assumed to be involved in criminal activity. This stereotype has kept our community from progressing,” she said, and called for educational funds to be allocated for young Sheedis.
“Education is our way out of poverty,” she said, noting the prejudice that many young Sheedis face at school.
“Most young people from our community are bullied and ridiculed in school, not just by their peers, but teachers as well, who tell them they are good for nothing,” said Qambrani, daughter of a lawyer and a headteacher.
The mother-of-three said Sheedi women often face a double discrimination due to South Asian beauty ideals that make it harder for them to find a spouse.
“The (Sheedi) men want to marry outside to dilute the skin tone of their offspring, leaving Sheedi women with no option as the wider Pakistani community is also looking for fairer skins for their spouses,” she said.
Qambrani’s appointment to the Sindh parliament in 2018, by Bilawal Bhutto, the leader of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and son of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, was hailed as a huge victory by Pakistan’s marginalized communities.
Now a well-known voice for her community, Qambrani said for many years her comfortable middle-class upbringing had shielded her from deep-seated prejudice against Sheedi people.
“I lived in a bubble and never realized what all my community suffered,” she said. (Reporting by Zofeen T. Ebrahim; Editing by Helen Popper. Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers the lives of people around the world who struggle to live freely or fairly.
Pakistan’s first Sheedi lawmaker targets ‘scourge of racism’
https://arab.news/8vhu4
Pakistan’s first Sheedi lawmaker targets ‘scourge of racism’
- Lodges protest resolution in the provincial assembly against a “wave of racism“
- Sheedis are descendants of East Africans who were brought to South Asia as slaves or soldiers by Arab traders
Over 50 feared dead in Karachi shopping plaza fire, officials say
- Search teams recover 14 bodies as officials warn toll may rise sharply
- Traders seek urgent compensation after 1,200 shops destroyed in blaze
ISLAMABAD: Pakistani authorities warned on Monday the death toll from a massive fire at a shopping plaza in Karachi could exceed 50, as recovery operations continued a day after the blaze destroyed over 1,200 shops in one of the city’s busiest commercial districts.
The fire broke out late Saturday at Gul Plaza in Karachi’s Saddar business area and spread rapidly through multiple floors. Firefighters battled for more than 24 hours to bring the blaze under control, which was fully extinguished by Monday, officials said, with cooling and debris removal now underway.
Deadly fires in commercial buildings are a recurring problem in Karachi, a city of more than 20 million people, where overcrowding, outdated infrastructure and weak enforcement of fire safety regulations have repeatedly resulted in mass casualties and economic losses.
During a meeting at the Chief Minister’s House on Monday, officials briefed Sindh Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah that 14 bodies had so far been recovered from the site, while the overall death toll could climb significantly as debris is cleared.
“Estimated fatalities could exceed 50,” the Sindh chief minister’s office said in a statement, quoting officials who briefed Shah on the scale of the disaster.
Shah was told that the shopping plaza, built over roughly 8,000 square yards, housed around 1,200 shops, leaving an equal number of traders suddenly without livelihoods. Shah said all affected shopkeepers would be rehabilitated and announced the formation of a committee to recommend compensation amounts and a recovery plan.
“The Gul Plaza building will be rebuilt, and we want to decide how the affected traders can be given shops immediately so their businesses can resume,” Shah said, according to the statement.
Officials said firefighting operations involved 16 fire tenders and water bowzers, with 50 to 60 firefighters taking part. The Karachi Water Board supplied more than 431,000 gallons of water during the operation, while Rescue 1122 ambulances reached the site within minutes of the first alert.
Authorities said access constraints inside the building, along with intense smoke, hampered rescue efforts in the early stages of the fire. A firefighter was among those killed, officials said, noting that his father had also died in the line of duty years earlier.
The provincial government ordered an immediate forensic investigation to determine the cause of the blaze, directing the chief secretary to notify a fact-finding committee. Shah also instructed that debris removal begin without delay so recovery teams could continue searching for victims.
The tragedy has also heightened anxiety within Karachi’s business community.
The Karachi Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KCCI) has formed a dedicated committee to document losses, coordinate relief and press the government for compensation, saying preliminary assessments indicate more than 1,000 small and medium-sized businesses were completely destroyed.
Ateeq Mir, a traders’ representative, has estimated losses from the fire at over $10 million.
“There is no compensation for life, but we will try our best that the small businessmen who have suffered losses here are compensated in a transparent manner,” Shah told reporters on Sunday night.
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has offered full federal support to provincial authorities, stressing the need for a “coordinated and effective system” to control fires quickly in densely populated urban areas and prevent similar tragedies in the future.
Battling large fires in Karachi’s congested commercial districts remains notoriously difficult. Many markets and plazas are built with narrow access points, encroachments and illegal extensions that block fire tenders, while buildings often lack functioning fire exits, alarms or sprinkler systems.
Although safety regulations exist, enforcement is sporadic, allowing hazardous wiring and flammable materials to go unchecked — conditions that enable fires to spread rapidly and magnify human and economic losses.
