One massacre too many

It was not for the first time on May 13 that we saw innocent people belonging to a particular sect massacred on the streets of Karachi. The mass murder of May 12, 2007, the burning alive of lawyers on May 18 the same year; the countless targeting of clerics, teachers and civil society activists; the burning of hundreds of factory workers and the countless targeted murders of policemen, all stay fresh in memory. Karachi has been a killing field for a very long time. But Karachi is not the only place where we see every form of political violence conducted by so many various shades and types of social, political, sectarian and criminal formations.

The terrorists have systematically been targeting ethnic minorities as well as being involved in sectarian violence in Balochistan and continue to target every vulnerable group. For quite some time, terrorists with transnational links have tormented the western borderlands of the country, daring to evict state institutions. They took over Swat and ruled it ruthlessly for years. Sectarian extremists and violent political groups have spared no city or region in the country. It is not just one form of violence that has taken the lives of more than 50,000 Pakistanis. Rather, every group that is able to use violence for political reasons does it with impunity.

Turning back to the latest massacre — the brutal murders of members of the Ismaili community — no explanation is good enough. As indicated earlier, Karachi has been the bloodiest city of the country, and even the subcontinent for decades. The same political forces, parties and leaders have been around while the mayhem has gone on unabated. There have been federal government, state institutions, and a similar template of political elite and political actors, with non-state actors under their wings. Two-faced politicians — representatives of the mandate of populations persistently living in fear and disgust — and their militant wings are under the direct command of very ‘popular’ leaders. This is not the story of one city, but the story of most of the country where we have seen persistent violence.

There is a general feeling of despondency and helplessness in knowing who did a thing as horrible as mass murder of unsuspecting, ordinary, innocent persons and why; not once but so many times, and in so many places, over and over again. We find no answer satisfactory enough, just the finger-pointing, ambiguous hints or philosophising on what has gone wrong in society and in state institutions.

Over such incidents, like the massacre of Ismailis and that of Hazaras in Quetta, there has been no credible, professional investigations, nor any accountability of the groups and parties responsible for these crimes against humanity. This leaves every one of us guessing and theorising conspiratorially according to one’s own choice of bad guys, leaving us in a hopeless situation.

It is the basic responsibility of the state, its institutions and all levels of government — from the provincial government to the federal government — to give us the answer or admit its failure and helplessness. In the latter case, it is then a question of incompetence or just a lack of interest in protecting lives of Pakistanis. In either case, there is no moral justification for the governments to remain in power. We are not talking about one incident, but a series of them, and over a long period of time — a pattern.

Power, political or bureaucratic, comes with responsibility and with a solemn commitment to discharge functions under the Constitution. In this and similar incidents that have gone untraced, we see the power groups failing us. We need answers, the faces of real criminals unmasked — not conspiracy theories.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 20^th, 2015.

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