Source/Credit: DAWN.COM | Pakistan
By Fahim Zaman and Kamyla Marvi |
The graphic images of 19-year-old Sarfaraz Shah hauled up for allegedly attempting to rob people with a gun and mask, begging the Sindh Rangers to spare his life and eventually losing his life have shocked the nation.
During the last three decades, our law enforcement agencies seem to have concluded, and as a society we seem to concur, that our criminal justice system does not work, so vigilante actions and murder in the name of police encounters are acceptable. Then why are we so shocked, aside from the obvious horror of the visuals?
Imagine a slightly different scenario. The same young man, ostensibly caught red-handed robbing visitors to the park, but this time the crowd decides to take the situation into its own hands.
Their faces are contorted with rage; their bloody fists pummel him relentlessly while his muffled cries and pleas for mercy grow silent as they beat him to death.
It’s not like we haven’t seen this before. It’s not like we even need proof of any transgression. Remember, how a frenzied mob in Sialkot used sticks and metal rods to mercilessly beat to death two teenaged brothers, Mughees and Muneeb. This bestiality took place in the presence of DPO Waqar Chauhan and eight other police officials who encouraged the mob.
Remember, Jagdesh Kumar a factory worker who in April 2008, was beaten to death by his colleagues for allegedly committing blasphemy, at an industrial area in Karachi, while the policemen watched. During one week in May 2008, the burning of five alleged dacoits by mobs was documented in two separate incidences in Karachi. There were no protests, perhaps because there were eyewitnesses to the men’s crime or perhaps because the barbaric proceedings had not been captured with the unforgiving eye of a camera.
Since their atrocious behaviour in East Pakistan our so-called security agencies have continued to play judge, jury as well as the executioner. But did the rest of society, apart from a few handful, boo those acts?
Let us recall the kidnapping of a young businessman in broad daylight from North Karachi during December 2007. After a week of hectic negotiations with the help of CPLC, kidnappers arrived at a restaurant near Aisha Manzil around 1.30 am to collect the ransom from their captive’s wife. Challenged by the police, one died and the other was arrested after being wounded in the crossfire. The businessman was miraculously recovered unharmed that night from the Afghan-populated Khaima Basti. The injured kidnapper was later shot dead in a fake encounter on Super Highway yet no one in the party, civilians included, lost any sleep that night. Justice was deemed to have been served.
And then there’s Balochistan, the long-festering wound on the body of this country and the conscience of its people where more then 1200 political activists, including lawyers, farm workers, students, are missing. Horribly mutilated bodies of missing people surface from time to time, discarded like trash along the roadside. And it is an open-secret who remains behind these disappearances and murders.
A senior journalist in Quetta recently described how the law enforcement agencies trawl the city in their vehicles “picking up whomever they choose, as though they were rounding up stray dogs, and throwing them into the back of their car”. There are many, many Sarfaraz Shahs in Balochistan whose lifeblood has drained from their bodies from similar gunshot wounds.
Take a look at the expressions of the jawans who have surrounded young Sarfaraz Shah. Even after one of them shoots him at point blank range, there is no trace of alarm or fear on their faces. It is business as usual, standard operating procedure. Just last month, two young unarmed Baloch were killed by trigger-happy rangers in Lyari – Shariful Haq and Baba Ismail – during a routine search operation in the area.
The Chief Justice of Pakistan has ordered removal of DG Rangers and IG Police, Sindh. But will the responsibility for the action ever be fixed on them or will they be moved to other lucrative postings?
The action in the park may be reminiscent of the final scenes from Jack Nicholson and Tom Cruise blockbuster “A Few Good Men”, where private Downey asks lance corporal Dawson “What did we do wrong if Santiago got killed while we administered ‘Code Red’ as ordered by Colonel Jessep?”
As events in recent years illustrate, this lack of respect for human life demonstrated time and again by law enforcement agencies has filtered through to the whole society, among whom the adrenalin rush of vigilante justice has become a not uncommon sensation.
There occur from time to time events that shake even us, a people inured to violence, and there is an outpouring of public fury and calls for justice. The Chief Justice of Pakistan did take suo moto notice of Shah’s murder as swiftly as he did of the public lynching of Mughees and Muneeb, and that is commendable.
While proactive as it is, the judiciary appears completely helpless in the resolution of the open and shut case of Governor Salman Taseer’s murder by his police guard, even though the latter accepts full responsibility for the premeditated act. Remember administration of justice cannot be selective!
Why should intelligence personnel be given carte blanche to abduct torture and murder civilians? Why is the religious organisation calling for the wholesale massacre of Ahmedi’s in Faisalabad at this very moment, not being chopped for inciting murder? Why shouldn’t security forces be under public control through their elected representatives?
One doesn’t need to comprehend Pluto’s ‘Republic’ to understand that the thorough brutalisation of our society being witnessed today is a result of the repeated abrogation of our social contract better known as the Constitution of Pakistan through repeated military takeovers, not to mention the ideology of hate officially fostered by our security establishment for over five decades.
The only long-term remedy is a concentrated dose of unadulterated democracy, along with social, economic, civil and criminal justice for the increasingly unfortunate lot of our countrymen. Until then, people of this country will not be safe from the highhandedness and vigilante justice, either at the hands of men-in-uniform, or from their fellow-citizens.
The writers are members of Citizens For Democracy, an initiative that aims to work against the misuse and abuse of the Blasphemy Laws and religion in politics.
Read original post here: Harvest of blood
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