Daily Times

Nearly a century ago, in 1914, a steamship, the Komagatu Maru, arrived in Vancouver, Canada carrying passengers of Indian origin. Among the passengers were 340 Sikhs, 24 Muslims, and 12 Hindus. All of them were British subjects. This was the period when an unprecedented number of immigrants was landing in Canada, but most of them were white-skinned Europeans. Despite being British subjects, the Canadian authorities did not allow the Indians to disembark on their land and after keeping them off coast for about two months they forced them to go back to their country of origin, only accepting 20 of them. No casualty took place but it left an embarrassing scar on the civil rights record of Canada’s history, and after a passage of close to 100 years, on July 23, 2012, a monument in the memory of that sad incident was inaugurated at Vancouver’s Harbour Green Park, and prior to that, on August 3, 2008, Prime Minister Stephen Harper had publicly issued an apology for the Komagata Maru incident. Long before erecting this monument, a Canadian playwright, Sharon Pollock, staged a play based on the Komagata Maru incident in January 1976. Later, two Indian Canadians, Ajmer Rode and Ali Kazmi, wrote a play and made a documentary covering this incident. These are the snapshots of how a western country and their people realised their mistakes and paid due respect to those who were once victims of the high-handedness of the state authority in the past.

Now take a look at us and see how we treated our own people who were victims of civil rights abuses. June 5, 2013 was a great day in the history of Pakistan when, for the first time in its history, an elected government transferred the power to another elected government. There was another historical record attached to this day: the newly elected representatives had to go through the bloodiest election campaign in the history of Pakistan. Nearly 26 National Assembly constituencies and 35 provincial Assembly constituencies were witness to target killings, injuries, destruction and kidnappings that were mostly carried out by militant organisations resulting in the death of 244 persons, including seven candidates for the National and provincial Assemblies: Fakhrul Islam (MQM) NA-221, PS-47, Malik Adnan Khan Wazir (ANP) PK-72, Sadiq Zaman Khattak (ANP) NA-254, Adnan Qualeti (PPP) PS-95, Muhammad Zahir Shah Khan (PPP) PK-96, Abdul Fateh Magsi (independent) PB-32, and Shakeel Ahmed (MQM-H) NA-241 and PS-95. If some of the targeted candidates were lucky enough to escape the deadly attacks, their loved ones, like sons, brothers, and cousins were not. Most of these unfortunate people were sent to their graves by some unknown and unidentifiable creatures using guns, bombs, hand grenades and suicide bombers. Those who claimed responsibility remained beyond the reach of the law-enforcing authorities and were ignored by the people and their leaders too. The number of injured persons was three times higher than the dead ones and all those parliamentarians that now occupy the new National and provincial Assembly seats owe their success to the sacrifices of these people. The security threats that loomed large in the country during the election campaign were very lucidly described by General Kayani in these words: “The nation withstood the threat of terrorism and defied the unfounded dictates of an insignificant and misguided minority by actively participating in the general elections.”

Alas, for the people’s representatives, it was totally a different case. After going through the bloodiest phase of the election campaign, when the day came for the elected representatives to form the new government, a conspicuous silence prevailed in parliament on the sacrifices of their loved ones and comrades when they all joined to elect the leader of the house. Neither the PM nor any member of parliament said a word of sympathy or condolence to the bereaved families of those who had died or been injured during their election campaigns. Sitting in parliament were the members of the PTI who had lost their MPA Farid Khan in Hangu only two days ago. Sardar Sanaullah Zehri was also there, who had lost his son Sikander Zehri, his brother Mir Mehar and nephew Mir Zaid in an attack on April 16, 2013. Maulana Fazlur Rehman of JUI-F was also present, whose party’s election campaign had suffered two major terrorist attacks in Orakzai and Hangu, resulting in the deaths of 35 persons and injuries to 105. The former ruling party, the PPP, also had all of its elected members sitting in parliament flanked by their coalition partners, MQM and ANP, but they were also tight-lipped though they had more victims of terrorism than all other parties. Only one day before the election a leading PPP candidate, Haider Raza Gilani, the son of former prime minister Yousaf Raza Gillani, was kidnapped from Multan, who remains untraceable to date.

Over 900 human lives, some silenced forever, some crippled or scarred for their whole life to remind them what price they had to pay for exercising their legal right of freedom to express their views and support a candidate of their choice. Among them were men, women, children and even old people hailing from different sections of society. They were either taking part in a political rally or attending a corner meeting or simply sitting at an election office of their political party when they became the target of violence. They are martyrs of democracy but nobody is willing to accord them this title. On the day of rejoicing the electoral victory, all political parties appeared to be more concerned about the victims of drone attacks than those who had stood by them when death threats were hanging on their heads. When the parliamentarians were celebrating their day of success, the bereaved families of their unfortunate comrades had nothing to celebrate. The silence of the parliamentarians conveyed one and only message to these unfortunate departed souls: “Rest in peace wherever you are and let us, the representatives of the people, take care of the drone attack victims.” No monument, no condolence, and no time to offer fateha (prayer) or observance of one-minute silence in honour of the unfortunate Pakistani citizens who had laid down their lives for the cause of democracy. Let bygones be bygones. Chapter closed!

The writer is a freelance journalist and researcher. He can be reached at mohammad.nafees@yahoo.com