On 12 May, Pakistan had its Black Sabbath. It turned out to be more bizarre than the surreal happenings that had preceded it, which included the takeover of the sole children's public library by hordes of black-hooded women, a mosque imam referring to the female students in Pakistan's premiere public university as prostitutes, and law-enforcement personnel dragging the country's chief justice by his hair. And all this in the capital, regarded as quite removed from the hurly burly of Pakistan's agitational politics!
Saturday, 12 May will go down in history as a shameful day for Pakistan. On that day, Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry, who had been abruptly deposed by General Pervez Musharraf on 9 March on spurious charges, was to address the legal practitioners of the Sindh High Court, in Karachi. On arriving at the Karachi airport, Chief Justice Chaudhry was detained for nine hours, before finally being put back on a plane bound for Islamabad. The entry points to roads from the airport to the High Court had been blocked by hundreds of trucks, buses and containers, orchestrated by the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), one of Musharraf's key support bases. Armed MQM thugs, with the tacit support of the MQM-dominated Sindh government, had also coerced lawyers and opposition party activists not to show their support for the suspended chief justice. One observer commented that even the Pakistan Army could not have so successfully halted life in Karachi.
The intimidation was not completely successful, however. All of the major opposition parties had already endorsed the call to greet the chief justice, and thousands defied the MQM threats to take to the streets. Earlier, Sindh Governor Ishrat ul-Ibad, also of the MQM, had warned Chaudhry to postpone his trip (although his talk had been planned long before); the chief justice in turn asked that the MQM not hold its rally on the same day.
As it happened, Chaudhry arrived in Karachi on schedule, and the MQM goondas proceeded to wield their street power on the gathered crowds, eventually opening fire. By the end of the day, 40 people were dead, 150 injured and countless vehicles destroyed. Although the state authorities had ordered the deployment of 15,000 security personnel, they did nothing to stop the MQM thugs. It has been reported that not only were the troops specifically directed not to intervene, but even their weapons were taken away. As such, security personnel were widely observed simply standing about, watching the violence unfold. This was in stark contrast to the previous 10 weeks, when the security forces had acted with alacrity against pro-Chaudhry protests and journalists covering the demonstrations. On 12 May, it was MQM supporters who assumed this role – firing repeatedly at the Karachi headquarters of Aaj TV, which was airing live coverage of the day's events.