The burden of shame

The state is rotten to its core. And if the core is rotten then the fruit is bad. Is it an irretrievable situation?

Television is a great medium, keeping us informed — but hang on what does being informed mean? Is informed being told, provided with information, made aware? Does being informed mean being knowledgeable? Or is it just a case of too much information? As we lurch from bloody and graphic scenes of extrajudicial killings to spot-fixing in cricket we explode with righteous indignation.

Firdous Ashiq Awan, who we all love to hate, came on television and said the two boys who were killed in Sialkot were criminals. It is a shame that a member of the federal cabinet would need to talk about the reality of extrajudicial killings being the norm in that particular district. That this was the only way alleged criminal activity is dealt with and ‘justice’ by the mob is meted out. It is a shame that this is not discussed in parliament. It is a shame that there is no attempt to reform the police. The greatest shame, however, is that we do not listen, we do not hear and we do not comprehend. Ms Awan’s statement tells us a lot. It tells us that there is no rule of law, that this is not a situation peculiar to Sialkot. We didn’t listen when it happened to Mukhtar Mai, to Dr Shazia Khalid, to Kainat Soomro, to the five women buried alive, to the Ahmadis killed in Lahore, to the Christians killed in Gojra, we have never listened.

The cricket spot-fixing scandal has not just hit the headlines in Pakistan; it’s big news in every cricket-playing country. While we shout ourselves hoarse on yes they did it, no they didn’t, it’s a Zionist conspiracy, it’s a set-up, sack everyone, send them to Sialkot, before and after photographs of a cricketer’s home are flashed on our screens. It’s a rags-to-riches-in-one-year story. Send them to Sialkot? Good grief, it is true we do not listen. How that particular cricketer got so rich so fast may be a thought that would cross one’s mind but if you had a system in place whereby you were accountable by declaring your assets and paying taxes we may not be calling for people to be sent to meet their maker at the hands of a mob in Sialkot.

The state we say is rotten, rotten to its core. And if the core is rotten then the fruit is bad. Is it an irretrievable situation? We come together to help each other in crisis; millions of Pakistanis are helping millions more who have been displaced by the floods. They have shown their humanity time and time again. They cannot all be labelled as bad. Our institutions are fledgling and constantly under attack. Parliament must be allowed to function and it must respect the judiciary. They both need to realise that they need each other to survive. Calls for a French Revolution and the military to rid us of our corrupt politicians are not the answer. Why do we need a bloody cleansing when we can do it by implementing the rule of law, by applying it to every single citizen, by enforcing it when there are transgressions, by not making exceptions?

We may be ashamed of what has happened but do we understand it? There is a great UB40 song about Britain, colonialism and apartheid and the lyrics go: “I’m a British subject, not proud of it, while I carry the burden of shame.”

Nothing happens in a vacuum, there is a context to everything and if we want to be proud to call ourselves Pakistani we should do something about our burden of shame.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 3^rd, 2010.