KARACHI:
We are reaping the harvest of extremism, ethnicity and sectarian divide, whose seeds had been sowed by the dictators in the past. Instead of a modern democratic welfare state, as envisioned by the Quaid and Allama Iqbal, what we have now is a country where the Constitution remains enslaved to the whims and greed of a few. The biggest threat to national security is the failure of the government and law-enforcement agencies to perform their duties in line with the law and the Constitution.
Irrespective of whether the brutal murder of Hazaras in Machh was instigated by foreign elements or the enemies within, the fact is that those responsible for protecting the lives of citizens have failed repeatedly. The brutal killing of a young man, Usama Satti, in Islamabad by trigger-happy men in uniform is an unpardonable crime. And how can the police and others responsible for law enforcement justify their incapability to stop a mob from damaging a Hindu shrine in Karak?
Images of the cold-blooded murder of a family captured on video near Sahiwal, including a 13-year-girl, still haunts public memory. These cannot be termed collateral damage, nor can they be dismissed as mere accidents, but simple criminal heinous murders. Those who lost lives were human beings, whose lives should matter as much as the lives of the elected or paid elite of this country. Merely calling ourselves an Islamic state is hypocrisy.
Ordinary law-abiding citizens are falling prey to criminals who manage to kill and get away on one pretext or another. A state that fails to perform its primary responsibility of protecting lives of citizens is a state that needs to cleanse the mess within its corridors of power. All state institutions exist to serve the people, otherwise why should their salaries be funded by tax-payers?
Malik Tariq Ali
Lahore
Published in The Express Tribune, January 7th, 2021.
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