Aid workers "executed" in attack Two unidentified gunmen entered the office of the Organisation for Peace and Justice in downtown Karachi, roped the employees to their chairs and executed seven of them one by one with a pistol shot to the head.

The gunmen then fled.

The Idare-e Amn-O-Insaf, or the Organisation for Peace and Justice, has dispensed legal advice to the poor, helped women and supported development projects in Pakistan for 30 years

From a small office in the southern port city of Karachi, a team of mainly Christian workers backed by the Protestant and Catholic churches helped the disadvantaged in one the world's most chaotic and unforgiving cities.

"We don't know how it happened," said Sakina Rahmat, an employee of the organisation as she choked back tears. "We have no enmity with anybody. How could this happen to us?"

Rahmat usually starts work in the afternoon and was not there at the time of the attack.

Instead of being at work she sat disconsolately at the bedside of a colleague who miraculously survived the attack, but will at best be paralysed down his left side after a bullet left part of his brain exposed. Maqbool Inderias, a Christian lawyer who has worked with the organisation for years, was as mystified as anyone by the attack.

"It is a welfare organisation and there is no discrimination between Muslims and Christians," he told Reuters. "We have people of both faiths working for the organisation. It has been providing relief to people of both religions."

"I cannot understand who has done that and why," he said. "All the victims are innocent people. They were not involved in any religious or political activities, they were simply social workers."

Karachi's crime has touched Idare-e Amn-O-Insaf before. Four or five months ago, a leading member of the organisation, former chairman Ivan Edwin, was also shot dead in his office, although Inderias does not suspect a link.

Support from the church

Inderias said Idare-e Amn-O-Insaf received support from foreign non-governmental organisations as well as the church in Pakistan. It had four desks.

One provided free legal aid to poor Christians and Muslims. Another carried out "sustainable development projects" providing education, water and sewerage to the needy.

A third desk, headed by a Muslim woman, helped women get jobs and advised on their rights, while a fourth, also with a Muslim in charge, published a magazine called "Jafakash" (Hard Worker).

Quite what the organisation had done to deserve the attack was not clear.

One recent edition of Jafakash touched on the sensitive issue of Pakistan's controversial blasphemy laws, but employees said mostly they wrote about human rights and labour issues.

More likely, analysts say, the employees of Idare-e Amn-O-Insaf were victims of an indiscriminate campaign by Islamic extremists against Christian and Western targets in Pakistan.

Angered by President Pervez Musharraf's support for the US-led war on terror, and his abandonment of the fundamentalist Taliban in neighbouring Afghanistan, they have been exacting a gory revenge all year.

Thursday's attack was the sixth major attack on Christian and Western targets in Pakistan this year, which have killed more than 40 people.

Leaders of Pakistan's tiny Christian community say they fear it may not be the last.

© AAP Published on Sep 26, 2002

-- Anonymous, September 26, 2002