Pakistanis Ask What a Lynching Means
The family of two teenage brothers who were beaten to death last month in Pakistan, after they were mistaken for criminals by an enraged mob, asked that a court-ordered post-mortem be delayed until a new medical expert can be appointed to the case, the Pakistani newspaper Dawn reported.
The chief justice of Pakistan's Supreme Court, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, had asked for the bodies of the two boys, Muneeb Butt and his brother Hafiz Mughees, to be exhumed because, a report said, local officials had tampered with medical evidence about the killings, which took place in front of several police officers in the city of Sialkot.
While local authorities were initially slow to act, 28 suspects are now in custody, including 10 police officers, Dawn reported on Wednesday.
The brutal killings, which were caught on video, have shocked Pakistanis and led to a debate about what this example of mob rule in Punjab Province says about the state of civil society in the country.
The murders took place on Aug. 15, when the boys, who were carrying cricket equipment in a bag, were mistaken for armed robbers and beaten to death with sticks, rods and bricks. They were then strung up next to an office of Punjab Province's emergency rescue service.
After video of the incident was shown of television, Danish Farid Khan wrote in a letter to the editors of Dawn, "as much as making videos or taking snaps was good to bring this incident to light, one must question the intent of the people capturing the events unfolding. As a nation it would be safe to say that we are all spectators that would stare and ogle "¦ in amazement or agony, and yet do nothing about it."
Days later, Fasi Zaka, an opinion columnist for The Express Tribune, an English-language newspaper in Karachi, wrote:
'Pakistan, you are a failed state. Not because of Zardari. Not because of America. But because you are a failed people, all of us undeserving of sympathy. We are diseased, rotten to every brain stem, world please make an impenetrable fence around us, keep us all in so we don't spread it to other people, other countries.'
These were words I posted on a social-networking Web site. I have an unusually negative mindset these days. It happened after I saw the video of the two teenage brothers brutally clubbed to death by a crowd frenzied with blood thirst in Sialkot. The police watched gleefully. The video has blurs at certain parts, but even this sensible sensitivity does not prevent one from seeing mists of blood flaying from the heads of these teens as they are hit relentlessly, and remorselessly, again and again.
The murderous crowd was truly representative of the richness of Pakistan. Some wear jeans, others shalwar kameez, some were bearded, others clean shaven. The Pakistanis had gotten together to have some fun.
Do not be shocked. This wasn't isolated, it's just that the crowd wanted to make sure their orgasmic moment could be captured for later viewing, at one's pleasure. We blame our ill-educated brethren for the barbarity we witness, but that's a self-serving lie.
The next day, George Fulton, an Englishman who has become a television personality in his adopted Pakistan, chimed in, arguing in the same publication that Pakistanis denouncing the crime were being hypocritical:
Oh, the shock! Oh, the disgust! Oh, the outrage over the barbaric killings in Sialkot! The media, the blogosphere, Facebookers have been going into hyperactive overdrive to out condemn one another over the senseless killings of the two teenage boys. Some have frothed with self-righteous anger, some have put the blame on poverty and illiteracy (a self-serving defense that ignores the violent solutions advocated in many a swanky drawing room discussion), some on the breakdown of the social contract between the state and the individual. But all seem shocked by the barbarity on display. But why are we surprised? Why the denial? Hasn't it always been thus?
We are, and have always been, a barbaric, degenerate nation reveling in blood lust. Our nation was forged during a bloody partition — in which up to one million people were massacred. One just has to read eyewitness accounts of the riots, the train butchery, the brutal rapes and slaughter of that period to get a feel of the heady, almost orgasmic, delight that the perpetrators of these crimes reveled in as the nation was born.
The lynching itself is nothing new. Read any report by the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan and you will see that this is a fairly regular occurrence. Christians, Hindus, homosexuals, suspected pedophiles and robbers have been killed at the hands of mob justice.
In response, Mahreen Aziz Khan, a lawyer, decried what she called "The Liberal Lynch Mob," writing in The Express Tribune:
This past week has seen columns, in these very pages, promoting a new brand of hatred –- self-hatred –- inciting loathing amongst Pakistanis for themselves and their culture. Using the horrific Sialkot killings, these 'Western, liberal' columnists have labeled all Pakistanis as 'degenerates' and 'barbaric,' hurling abusive and shameful generalizations to justify a verbal lynching of Pakistan, its culture and people. "¦
These columnists would not dare to write in such sadistic terms about Western cultures. No, they only prey on weak — pure lynch mob mentality — developing nations like Pakistan, battered by natural catastrophe, war and poverty. The reality is that Pakistanis are inherently no better and no worse than any other people. The best amongst us lay down our lives to rescue those in need, open our homes and hearts to complete strangers, protest peacefully for justice. The worst amongst us are as brutal as the mobs which massacred women and children in the streets of Gujarat, with the Indian police looking on, harbor as much bigotry as the preachers of hate, whether they be Christian, Hindu, or Muslim.
When the rule of law is eroded, men, irrespective of race, turn into an unruly mob"¦ police officers turn into executioners and ordinary people into accomplices. Pakistanis will and must maintain pressure to obtain justice in Sialkot. They will do so not out of self-loathing or in response to the verbal lynching liberals, but because they believe it is the right thing to do.
Also writing in the Express Tribune, Salman Masood — who contributes to The New York Times — agreed that the incident revealed the weakness of civil society in Pakistan, but called the blanket denunciations of the whole of Pakistani society unhelpful. He wrote:
Year after year, Pakistan has witnessed a gradual erosion of the state's authority, deterioration and decay of institutions and fraying of the social and moral fiber of society. We live in a Pakistan where life has become cheaper and expendable, where law is selective and easily manipulated and where bitter realities eclipse any idealistic notions. Often, duplicitous and hypocritical behavior marks day-to-day actions and interactions in society. Tolerance is on the wane and extremism is thriving.
But the sheer brutality of the mob lynching in Sialkot has unnerved the national conscience and there has been a massive outpouring of grief, outrage and condemnation. And, therefore, I would take an exception to Fasi Zaka's article "¦ where in utter bad taste he belittled Pakistanis as 'cockroaches.' He is right, there is a sickening sense of moral superiority in Pakistanis, but collectively denigrating and insulting the whole nation is unfair. George Fulton's 'Don't Be Surprised' (published the next day) went further in his over-the-top characterization of Pakistanis as 'brutal' and 'savage.'
Mr. Masood added:
The outrage over the Sialkot incident demonstrates that those who view the incident as a grave injustice exist in society. Such voices need to be heard, strengthened and amplified. We also need clarity on why social order collapsed in this particular episode. The culprits should be brought to justice according to the law and in absolute terms. Media and civil society should keep the momentum strong enough to force the government to take tangible, meaningful action.
Had the pieces by Mr. Zaka and Mr. Fulton been reflective of national soul-searching, one might have given them credit. But the acerbic and demeaning stereotyping and insinuations screaming out of such articles will do nothing to prevent any future batons that hit those young brothers in Sialkot.
