Daily Times

Sir: The elections are there and it seems that a part of the campaign process is killing the candidates. Just a few days ago, we were hit with Bilour’s death. And now two more incidences have taken place.

As I write this, the total tally of attacks stands at three, and they have claimed dozens of lives, killing so many in an instant and injuring many more.

The most recent attack took place in Mustang, where PB-35 candidate Siraj Raisani lost his life.

The candidate was a part of the Balochistan Awami Party (BAP). Estimates suggest that the Dringargh blast claimed the lives of around 128 people. Another 150 were injured in the attack — and once we recover from the shock we will have to think about what happens to these people.

In another attack, Akram Durrani survived in Bannu when a JUI-F convey was hit. Four people died while 39 were injured during this attack. In the end, it seems we have reduced people to just numbers.

After the dust has settled all we are left with is the narrative where we cannot forget our “martyrs”. As a country, we have become too comfortable with people dying and going to heaven this way. We are complicit in their deaths because we do not acknowledge that the people killed in senseless violence are essentially just people that were murdered. Glorifying their unnecessary death by adding a label only helps us sleep better at night. We have been doing this for decades, it’s nothing new.

We started to really like the trend when our own children died in 2014. So many young boys will never come home again, but it’s okay because they are all martyrs. They were fighting no war; they were just going to school. And in a country where people are still afraid of sending their children to school, we have done nothing after the horrible deaths we saw during the APS Peshawar attack.

We are a country that is obsessed with its martyrs. Perhaps when we start calling them people that were murdered we will become more open to the idea of stopping such incidents before they happen. There’s no sadness for someone that has gone to heaven, right?

At the end of the day, if our people cannot wake up to the reality that our own people are being killed every single day, we will never change things. However, we must ask ourselves, how long before we are the ones being martyred? And will heaven be reason enough for us to accept our deaths.

Nuzhat Atif

Lahore

Published in Daily Times, July 15^th 2018.