Disclaimer: The Eqbal Ahmad Centre for Public Education (EACPE) encourages critical and independent thinking and believes in a free expression of one’s opinion. However, the views expressed in contributed articles are solely those of their respective authors and do not necessarily reflect the position or policy of the EACPE.
As 2020 came to an end, everyone hoped that 2021 would be different, but it seems that in Pakistan we can’t hold on to hope for long. Just three days into the New Year, 11 coal mine workers belonging to the Hazara community were brutally slaughtered and their bodies were thrown away near Mach, a town in Balochistan. As if this was not enough, the Prime Minister of Pakistan refused to be ‘blackmailed’ by the families that had been sitting for days with the bodies of their loved ones, unlike the graceful manner in which New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern responded to tragedy in her country.
In 2019, a lone terrorist attacked two mosques in Christchurch, a city in New Zealand, resulting in the killing of almost 49 people and many injured. The kind of response the state and the Prime Minister gave was not only applauded locally but globally, too. New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern embraced the victims and their families; stood by them in their darkest hour and made sure to tighten gun laws while launching a global initiative to curb online extremism. The courts also handed down a life sentence without parole to the assassin.
This is how a state and leaders are supposed to take responsibility for their citizens, especially in times of crises.
This is not the first time that the Hazara community has been attacked or let down in Balochistan.
Years ago, I met two people who had lost their loved ones in separate incidents. Tahir Wadood Malik lost his wife in a suicide attack in World Food Program office in Islamabad. The culprits were arrested and then let off by the courts due to insufficient evidence. A few years later, I met Dr. Fatima Ali Haider, who lost her husband and son in sectarian violence in Lahore. The culprits were arrested and then let go due to lack of evidence, though later punished in another case. For a very long time I kept wondering why the victims remain silent; why don’t they register their protest and wondered how do they deal with their pain. Finally, thanks to PM Imran Khan, that mystery got solved. They knew the state and the system could not be ‘blackmailed’ by their pain and loss.
This is not the first time that the Hazara community has been attacked or let down in Balochistan. Over the years, they have held numerous sit-ins, protested and demanded security which the state has failed not only to fulfill, but also refused to accept that there is even an issue at hand. Leaderships would not reach on time, made them wait, only when the pressure started to build they would reach on ground. PM Imran Khan just translated their actions and spelled it out. He has once and for all told us that you can’t blackmail the Prime Minister or the state.
It was the same Imran Khan who spoke against drone attacks and terrorism while campaigning against the previous regimes, so people expected him to understand the pain of the victims and hop onto the first flight and reach Quetta, but we forgot that he also said that a terrorist was a Shaheed (martyr) and wanted to allow the Talibans to open office in Peshawar.
We keep swinging between 60 to 80 thousand people killed in this war against terror. Our lives have been reduced to inaccurate statistics.
No one expects to bring their loved ones home in a coffin, when just hours and in some cases minutes back they were packing their bags, making breakfast, planning a grocery list or reciting Ayat-ul-Qursi just as they left home. That one phone call or news flash changes everything within seconds. Till date we do not have an exact figure of how many people have been killed due to terrorism and sectarian violence only because of the state’s callousness. We keep swinging between 60 to 80 thousand people killed in this war against terror. Our lives have been reduced to inaccurate statistics. But the victims of terrorism and their families especially women and children can recall each and every pain they have suffered: how many times the state has failed them starting from the point of lapse in security to receiving first aid; getting a death certificate or going back into the system and restarting life again, but remember that scars of trauma can’t blackmail the PM or the state.
Instead, after sitting for nearly six days the Hazara families buried their loved ones after being ‘blackmailed’ by the PM. This incident has been a lesson for everyone: don’t fight the system, don’t blackmail the PM, because everyone cannot be Jacinda Ardern.
About the writer
R. Umaima Ahmed is a journalist, digital rights and security activist with an interest in strategic studies. Last but not the least, an animal person.
