ludUO

WAPDA Hydro Electric Central Labor Union in Peshawar.
were upset by their efforts to organise workers. In July, the president of All
Pakistan Clerks Association (APCA) at the Lahore Accountant General’s office,
Bakhsh Elahi, was shot and killed by unidentified men. The APCA workers at
the Accountant General’s office, led by Elahi, had been on strike for the preceding
12 days. The murderers of a WAPDA union leader in Jhang and president of
PIA workers union in 2011 were neither identified nor brought to justice till the
end of 2012.
The ordeal of six power loom union leaders in Faisalabad who had been
convicted to a total of 594 years in prison continued as they entered the third
year of their sentence. The workers decried the unduly harsh sentence as a
ploy to undermine trade unions’ struggle for labour’s rights. Until the end of
2012, the hearing had not started on an appeal filed against the conviction in
the Lahore High Court. [See also the chapter ‘Labour’]
Victim by association
Although there were no legal curbs barring association with any political
or religious-political party, streaks of violence in some parts of the country
were specifically directed against activists or leaders of one political party or
another. Such violence was most frequent in parts of Balochistan and Khyber
Pakhtunkhwa provinces and in Karachi.
To put in perspective the risks on account of political affiliation, the 3,105
people who were killed in various incidents in Karachi in 2012, included 356
political activists.
In December, the Taliban claimed responsibility for the assassination of
Bashir Ahmed Bilour, Awami National Party (ANP) leader and Khyber
Pakhtunkhwa minister, and eight other people in a suicide bombing in Peshawar.
A Taliban spokesman said that they had established a ‘revenge wing’ that had
targeted Bilour. He also warned that ANP and the Muttahida Qaumi Movement,
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State of Human Rights in 2012