Organization of the Mauritius petition

This is a small account of how signature campaign was organized atMauritius

The outcome of any fight depends most of all, only on ORGANIZATION.For the benefit of students active in this heroic campaign, I will give here briefly, the manner in which the message was prepared here in Mauritius. Hopefully, students and campaigners everywhere will be able to benefit from our short and limited experience.
Since I came here [Mauritius, Africa] I have given three or so talks to the politicalstudies society at the University of Mauritius concerning the situation inPakistan. I kept keeping regular contact with leftist and pan-African-ist student groups here. The "campaign" was preceded bythree or so days of meetings with the memberships of these groups,and kept a few meetings at my flat, at which the points of themessage were hammered out and gained approval of these points.Following that we organized four volunteer groups of two or three students each, which would spend three days collecting signaturesfrom the two largest universities here.\
We worked through the student's unions of these universities. At the campuses, (two at each campus) one group would set up atable, and a music system playing bob Marley nonstop and onewould grab the megaphone after an interval of every half hour or so(throat still hasn't recovered) the other would be roaming around collecting signatures.
After that it was all legwork. After collecting these signatures, we mailed a copy to the PM'soffice, and a "guerrilla group" went to the Pakistani highcommission to hand in the message in person. Before hand, we printedtwo or three huge posters containing the main resolutions andslogans and pasted it on the walls.Just eight or nine of us, but ORGANIZED. (and very expensive on my phone bill).
Without organization, the people have nothing.

In Solidarity,
Ahmed Khan