When we hear news of an impassioned mob taking the law into their own hands and effectively lynching someone suspected of a crime, it is safe to assume that we are nearing apocalyptic times. In Pakistan, the rule of law is as flimsy as a deck of cards-a tiny flick of the hand and everything comes tumbling down. Interpersonal conflicts are routinely blown out of proportion, suspects beaten and lynched before they ever get to the courtroom and occasionally even dragged out of police stations while law enforcement sits indifferently to the side. Mobs seem to think they know what’s best for everyone and the state certainly doesn’t do enough to disabuse them of that notion.
It might be difficult to understand why someone might kill another person when there are no ideological forces at play or even a personal vendetta waiting to be settled. But in a country where people can’t exert any kind of restraint over their base impulses, vigilantism is an inevitability-a symptom, rather, of our perceived entitlement over other people’s lives. This is precisely what happened in Karachi yesterday when two people allegedly accused of a robbery were ruthlessly attacked by a mob, one of them pronounced dead on arrival at the hospital.
There is hardly a grimmer demonstration of the challenge facing those who still hope to see law enforcement step up to the demands of their job. We mustn’t forget that vigilantism represents an attempt to implement the law in an otherwise lawless setting-to create a legal process where none is perceived to exist. Indeed, the police is just as complicit in maintaining this culture of violence-even going as far as to offer immunity to vigilante actors who pose as morally upright citizens determined to uphold the law. But the crux of the problem lies with incompetencies within the policing system itself-it is exceedingly clear to anyone with a functioning brain that the public simply doesn’t trust the police to do their jobs. Mob violence is a symptom of a larger malaise involving the state’s inability to protect its citizens-it isn’t the disease itself. *