The images from Karachi on Monday — of tear gas choking the air, water cannons unleashed on crowds, and gridlocked streets — are a stark reminder of how the state all too often turns to coercion rather than competence. As hundreds of civil servants marched towards the Chief Minister’s House to demand promotions and pay raises, the response of the Sindh government was not engagement, but escalation.
There is no need to delve into the specifics of the Sindh Employees’ Alliance’s demands to recognize that the right to peaceful protest is a cornerstone of any functioning democracy. From nurses to teachers to clerks, public sector workers are citizens first. They must be heard, not hosed.
Instead, what unfolded in Karachi was the deployment of tactics that belong more to a state of emergency than to a healthy republic. Protesters were met with barricades, water cannons, and tear gas. No arrests were made — a tacit admission, perhaps, that the protesters posed no real threat. And yet, they were treated as if they had declared war.
This kind of heavy-handedness not only undermines public trust, it sets a dangerous precedent. Pakistan’s political landscape is no stranger to protest. Nearly every major party in power today has, at some point in the past, taken to the streets. They marched, rallied, and occupied — often with police protection or, at the very least, police restraint. But once in office, those same political actors seem to forget the democratic space they once demanded. The baton replaces the ballot, and coercion stands in for dialogue.
This hypocrisy corrodes institutions. When the state uses force to shut down protest from within its own ranks — public sector employees who have served under its flag — it sends an ominous signal about how dissent from ordinary citizens might be treated tomorrow. Worse still, it erodes the very credibility of future political protests. If a provincial government refuses to tolerate a protest today, what legitimacy can it claim when it finds itself out of power and marching for its own rights tomorrow?
Law enforcement, for its part, must move beyond the reflexive use of brute force. Crowd management is a science, not an impulse. Cities across the world have developed de-escalation protocols that minimize confrontation while maintaining public order. Training, restraint, and dialogue should be the pillars of policing in democratic societies. It is not too much to expect that Sindh’s administration rise to that standard.
The state’s response in Karachi was more than just an overreaction; it was a failure of imagination. Protest is not an inconvenience to be suppressed. It is a message to be heard. And in any democracy worthy of its name, that message must never be drowned out by the hiss of tear gas.
