Severed head

There is a need for our religious scholars and leaders of political parties to encourage sectarian harmony.

Karachi is not new to violence. A variety of factors, such as ethnicity, religion, sect, turf, etc. have led to violence against members of rival groups. In a city of 20 million, violence is not an oddity as too many people are fighting for too little resources.

Every now and then, there are, however, cases of violence that make even the desensitised residents of the city squirm. One such incident is the killing of a retired civilian employee of the Pakistan Navy. The man was beheaded by unidentified persons inside his house in Buffer Zone, a neighbourhood in this city’s north, but his head was found hanging from a bridge in nearby Sohrab Goth. The brutality with which the man was beheaded and his death made a display of hints at the fact that people behind violent crimes are no longer satisfied by merely killing their enemy. They want his death to stand as a warning to their other enemies. If, until now, we saw various armed groups fighting to achieve the highest number of killings, in future, we may see these groups fighting to achieve the most brutal of killings. The poster displayed next to the head claimed the former official was killed to avenge the Rawalpindi incident. If that is the case, if the sect that the victim belonged to decides to avenge his murder, they may try to top their rivals by killing in an even more vicious manner. There is, therefore, a need for our religious scholars and leaders of political parties to encourage sectarian harmony.

There is also a need for the law-enforcement agencies to pursue the case efficiently, arrest the culprits and make sure they are given exemplary punishments so that this behaviour is discouraged. Political parties also need to play an active role in condemning their activists, if they are found to be in any way involved in such acts. Hopefully, laws against hate speech will play a long-term role in preventing such acts.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 3^rd, 2013.

Like Opinion & Editorial on Facebook, follow @ETOpEd on Twitter to receive all updates on all our daily pieces.