Only recently, we have suffered the loss of Ali Raza Abidi’s life. Before him, there was Mashal Khan, Sabeen Mahmud, Amjad Sabri, Irfan Ali Khudi, Hasan Zafar Arif, Rashid Rehman, Shahbaz Bhatti and not to mention Benazir Bhutto. What connects all of these individuals is that, at one level or the other, they stood opposed to authoritarian tendencies in the state and the non-state proxies from the majority Sunni Muslim sect. These personnel are also united in representing the pluralist face of Pakistan, a country with multiple nations and religious groups.
The list of lives cut short in Pakistan for holding dissenting views is a long one. It includes journalists, leftist politicians, Baloch, Pakhtun, Sindhis, Christians, Ahmedis, and Shia Hazara. In some instances, the responsibility rests with institutions of the state, and in others with the many proxies dotting the Pakistani landscape
The list of lives cut short in Pakistan for holding dissenting views is a long one. It includes journalists, leftist politicians, Baloch, Pakhtun, Sindhis, Christians, Ahmedis, and Shia Hazara. In some instances, the responsibility rests with institutions of the state, and in others with the many proxies dotting the Pakistani landscape. The situation has only worsened over the years. When they don’t kill one of us, they make them go missing. The Baloch and the Pakhtun know this quite too well. Of late, the dissenters in central Punjab too have tasted this solution devised by we-know-whom.
The problem in dealing with crimes against dissenting voices through the notion of retributive justice alone is that we can lose sight of the fact that the crimes we’re dealing with are fundamentally political in nature. That is, they have to do with the following question: who holds power, and can really define the limits of permissible and impermissible speech in Pakistan? These kinds of crimes cannot be tackled without addressing the underlying political questions. Put simply, hanging those who pulled the trigger alone won’t do. Those of us invested in enabling the kind of lives we’ve seen cut short in Pakistan will have to take stock of the entire network, inside the state as well as in the society, that nurtures the bigoted mindset. We can either get together to dismantle this network of hate and bigotry, or keep waiting like sitting ducks for its only a matter of time that it will be our turn too.
Published in Daily Times, January 4th 2019.
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