What is happening in Karachi is worse than the killings in Swat or Waziristan. People are being killed in Karachi in the presence of police, Rangers and a functioning government while our political masters are playing poker with the chips of lives of innocent men, women and children. The ethnically motivated killings by thugs riding on motorbikes is followed by verbal rhetoric of those who stage manage these killings. Karachi bleeds as its so-called elected and unelected Dons claim their pound of flesh. What is happening under a democratic setup is no different from what happened under Musharraf or Zia-ul-Haq. The statistics show that in 2009, about 1747 innocent people were reported killed. -ANEELA CHANDIO, Sukkur, February 3