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| World sees anti-Christian pattern in Lahore killing | |
By Manzoor Ahmed
Criticism from the world community is a major reason why Pakistani media keeps harping, albeit in anguish, some of which is genuine, that more Muslims die as a result of terrorism, when a Christian shrine or anyone belonging to the religious minority is attacked. This is the theme after the Easter massacre in Lahore in which 78 men, women and children died in a suicide attack. It was clear the park, Gulshan-e-Iqbal, was full of Christians, besides thousands of other holiday makers. Afraid of criticism by the West that bankrolls its development and even military purchases, the Pakistan Government did not release the identities of the 78 killed and 250-plus injured, some of them seriously. There is not much by way of hospital check to follows up on the casualties to know if some of the injured succumbed. There were two church attacks in Peshawar in 2014, the year when Shia families were attacked during the Mohurram and Ahmediyya shrines were attacked. Last year had seen protests by Sikhs, another microscopic minority. Christians, essentially local converts, are mainly middle and working class people community.
This suicide bombing is the latest in a series of attacks seeking to eliminate the minorities from the public realm. But while these atrocities target members of religious minority groups, attacking them in public spaces means that the damage is borne by all members of Pakistan’s middle- and working-classes. In Pakistan, there are few places where working- and middle-class families can spend time together, outside of their homes and places of worship. This is partly because many public places are not seen to be appropriate places for women. Pakistan is a highly segregated society since the introduction of conservatism and even fanaticism by military dictator Ziaul Haq. Harassment of women, even abductions is common occurrence.
Markets are often viewed as male-dominated spaces, where women should not loiter. And while shopping malls and coffee shops are considered by many to be appropriate places for women to meet, entertain their children, eat and shop, many working- and middle-class families are excluded, either because of the location or the prohibitive cost of the merchandise available there. Those who can afford these places, do come with families and with maids in toe to mind the kids. A famous Karachi restaurant last year figured on the social media and in the print with pictures of maids waiting on the employers or minding the babies with no sign of being allowed to sit or partake food, even on a separate table.
Public parks are places where families can socialise, exercise and take their families outside of the segregated religious spaces of mosques or churches. They are also some of the only locations in Pakistan where Sunni Muslim families share space with members of Pakistan’s minority communities — Shias, Christians and Ahmedis.
By targeting Gulshan-i-Iqbal park for the deadly attack, the Taliban splinter group Jamaat-ul-Ahrar are seeking to intimidate religious minorities into abandoning the public realm. Sadly, they are not the only ones seeking to silence Pakistan’s minority voices. By no coincidence, at the same time as the bomb detonated in the Lahore park, 10,000 people were invading Islamabad’s parliamentary area to protest against the execution of a self-confessed murderer: Mumtaz Qadri. Qadri was hanged in February for the assassination of former Punjab governor, Salman Taseer, who had been seeking to reform Pakistan’s blasphemy laws.
These laws are used and misused to target the minorities, even juveniles, to settle old scores, property disputes, neighbourhood quarrels and personal rivalries. All that a Muslim needs to do is to accuse the targeted victim of desecrating a mosque, tearing up or burning of a copy of Quoran or saying or writing anything derogatory. It is easy to incite a crowd against this alleged blasphemy and the crowd often takes the law into the hand. There have been cases of lynching if the victim. The accused are arrested, tried and convicted. There has been no case of acquittal because the judges fear for their lives after some of them were assaulted or killed.
The blasphemy laws can lead to a death sentence for those accused of insulting Islam. Taseer had argued that the law was being used to victimise Pakistan’s Ahmedi and Christian communities. The issue of blasphemy is politically sensitive and attempts to amend the law have been virulently opposed by religious groups and conservative political parties. The protesters gathered in Islamabad demanded the implementation of Sharia law across the country; the release of Sunni religious clerics charged with murder and terrorism; that Mumtaz Qadri be declared a martyr; and that members of the Ahmadi community and other religious minorities be removed from key government posts. The protest was called off after the Interior Minister provided a verbal agreement not amend the blasphemy law nor to act leniently towards those convicted under it, to release all those arrested for protesting, and to review cases against clerics charged under the Anti-Terrorism Act. The attack in Lahore and the protests in Islamabad reflect different political agendas. Yet both are aligned in that they seek to eradicate religious minorities from the public space: from parks and from leadership positions in government. These groups form an influential political power bloc, which each of Pakistan’s successive governments has had to contend with and appease.
Pakistan’s government and military — the de facto power holder — have each contributed to division and intolerance in the country by systematically removing forums for public debate on a range of issues: from the blasphemy law, to the insurgency in Baluchistan. Those in power have sought to silence any direct critique of the military leadership, intelligence agencies or their senior leadership. Indeed, in April 2015, a public event titled ‘Unsilencing Balochistan’ at the Lahore University of Management Science was cancelled on the instruction of the government. The speakers sought to raise awareness of the enforced disappearance of an estimated 18,000 Balochis — those native to the Pakistani province of Balochistan —in the conflict between separatists and national security forces.
A local activist, Sabeen Mahmud, rescheduled the cancelled talk by hosting the event in the small community space she ran above a bookshop in Karachi. She was assassinated by unknown perpetrators as she left the event. The taboos around these issues have resulted in a national media which is reluctant to directly critique the government, the security forces or conservative religious parties. Journalists reporting on these issues have been found dead in suspicious circumstances. Many others have received threats, both veiled and direct. Much of the criticism is in comic or satirical form – more in the form of entertainment. It is confined mainly to the English language media that has very limited reach. The op-eds of major English language newspapers in Pakistan critique these institutions with vague allusions to ‘the Establishment’ and ‘the Boys’. Returning to the Lahore killings, neither the upper classes who hold government and leadership roles, nor the generals and brigadiers who staff the army, spend their time in public parks. They have their own private gardens, air-conditioned homes and private security personnel. Writing in The Conversation, Rosita Armytage is a political anthropologist and PhD candidate researching power and influence, and social mobility in Pakistan at The Australian National University, notes that the public spaces available to minority, working- and middle-class Pakistanis are getting smaller and smaller — and so are the forums to debate or critique the authorities’ failure to address these issues.
(The writer is a freelance journalist based in Kashmir) .
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