Collateral Damage
By Faraz Beg • May 5th, 2008 • Category: Politics, Worth A Second Look • 5 CommentsDecember 27, 2007 will be remembered not only for the murder of Benazir Bhutto, but also for the blood bath in Karachi. However, since no harm was done to my loved ones, I, selfishly, forgot it as another bad day. Until yesterday!
Yesterday I got a call from an old acquaintance, let’s call him Shahid. The Shahid that I knew was a businessman whose garments were exported to the Middle East. He led a happy life and had everything he could wish for. But the Shahid that called me yesterday was broke, penniless.
On December 27, his consignment was on the way from the port when hell broke in Karachi. His trucks were intercepted and disappeared. This consignment was bigger than his previous ones so he had borrowed a lot of money from other sources. He had to sell his car, his wife’s jewelery and who knows what else to pay the debt but that wasn’t enough. Now he’s totally hand to mouth. The reason that he called me was to do him a favor. He asked me not for the money, but asked me to get him a job – any job.
I choked; I couldn’t even empathize with him. Words were totally meaningless at that time. All I could manage was a promise, something that he’s heard many times over in the last 4 months. I told him to call me back on Monday and he hung up.
What happened to Shahid is probably rife in Pakistan. Mass murders are being given amnesty but innocent people are paying the price. His children are hungry not because of a mistake of their father, but because of a faceless hand that exploited the situation and snatched their hard earned bread.
How long will it take us to step up and break that hand that deprives those children from their bread? They can’t be many of them, we couldn’t comprise of 160 million dead people.
Why do we always wait for someone to hang himself before we look to help him? Helping a head of a family in his life is far easier than trying to feed his children after his death.
What would it take for us to stop another 27 December?
Trackback URL
|
|
|
It was mentioned in TV Talk show that more than 50 people were killed, 12 girls were gang raped, banks looted, and businesses/properties targeted during the riots. According to written media, the Mohajir & Punjabi individuals/businesses were the key target.
The current PPP government conveniently decided to drop all registered cases and charges related to December 27th by calling it a ‘public reaction’.
The stance taken by so-called civil and human rights champions (e.g. Aitzaz, Imran, Asma) related to December 27th terrorism and PPP’s decision is drastically different than May 12th incident which clearly exposes their bias and double standards.
One word “JUSTICE”
Farid its not just justice ,its the “rule of law”that requires to be implemented .Justice is the second step so that “justice shall prevail”.convictions ,confiscations of the culprits are the primaries and justice ,as secondary essential element .however both are parts and parcel of the law and legislations and society .
That’s what I mentioned earlier how come the relevent courts and the lawyers, justices, so called civil soceity, human rights organisations, qazi hussain, imran khan, nawaz sharif etc even the the prolific writers on this blog (other tthan you Faraz) had never raise this issue.
Shame on all these I mentioned above. This is our judicial system which is rightly said by Asif Zardari badly needed to be up-graded and modified.
Do anybody think that if suo-moto CJP was there he could take another suo moto against PPP at that decision of dropping cases against those culprit. I don’t think so.
So we need to change the syste not just bring same old faces back in the name of independent judiciary.
Farid Masood on May 5th, 2008 : One word “JUSTICE”
Shame! if you find this “JUSTICE”