By Zofeen Ebrahim
KARACHI, Pakistan, Aug 30 (IPS) – A breakdown in Pakistan’s justice system, a sign of a society desensitised to violence, an example of mob brutality.
Whatever one calls the sight filmed on video by at least
two television stations – of two teenage brothers being
clubbed to death by a group of men in the eastern city of
Sialkot in Punjab province – it brings out into the open
many difficult questions that Pakistanis are asking about
their society.
Shock over the Aug. 15 lynching – which the crowds did
nothing to stop – spread after the footage was shown last
week on all local televisions channels, and carried in
international media reports. The video provoked calls for
the government to step in to put a stop to vigilante
justice.
“The Sialkot outrage sums up the degeneration of
Pakistani society and the state institutions,” I A Rehman,
secretary-general of the independent Human Rights Commission
of Pakistan (HRCP), told IPS.
The grainy footage showed the two brothers, 19-year-old
Mughees Butt and 15-year-old Muneeb, being beaten with
sticks and wires by the men before being hung, alive, from
metal poles.
The reason for the killing remains under inquiry, and
reports said the men who beat up the youngsters were
students from a ‘madrasah’ or Islamic religious school.
A local journalist interviewed by IPS said the lynching
was related to a woman and not one of crime or theft. But
other media reports said that when Interior Minister Rehman
Malik met the brothers’ family on Aug. 22, he referred to
their having tried to rob a house but saying that even if
guilty, “they (the public) cannot act as the investigator,
prosecutor, judge and executioner”.
“The fact that the criminals resorted to such extreme
violence was disturbing enough,” says psychologist Asha
Bedar, but found even more appalling the fact that so many
people stood and “watched and not one of them was shocked,
horrified or sickened enough to intervene”. Seventeen of the
18 suspects in the lynching have been arrested.
This desensitisation to violence is combined with what
peace activist Q Isa Daudpota says is the breakdown of the
judicial process, which makes some think they can take
justice into their own hands.
This is reinforced by incidents of “fake police
encounters”, adds Farooq Tariq, spokesman of the Labour
Party Pakistan. ‘Police encounters’ is a euphemism used in
India, Pakistan and Bangladesh to describe extrajudicial
killings in which police shoot down alleged suspects before
they can go through trial.
Yet mainstream media and the public gave glorified cases
where police have killed suspected criminals in fake
encounters, Tariq says. He cites the example of Zulfiqar
Ahmed Cheema, deputy inspector general in Gujranwala, a town
neighbouring Sialkot, who was conferred the ‘Tamgha-e-
Imtiaz’ or medal of excellence, the fourth-highest
government honour given to members of the military and
civilians. “He paraded them (killed suspects) in the city
and got showered by rose petals by the citizens,” he
recalls.
“As a matter of policy, police kill suspects in the so-
called encounters and they see no reason to stop citizens
from following suit,” Rehman says, recalling that a police
officer once appeared on television to announce awards to be
given to citizens who killed criminals.
Rehman traces the brutalisation of Pakistani society to
the 11 years (1977-1988) of martial law under dictator
Muhammad Zia ul-Haq. This was also the result of
Islamisation starting with Zia’s Hudood laws, or Islamic
decrees introduced in 1979 by General Zia that cover a range
of crimes and apply to non-Muslims, adds senior journalist
Ghazi Salahuddin.
In short, Pakistan is paying “for the militancy of
bigots”, Rehman points out. Tariq adds that often, mob
justice is also strengthened by religious teachings that
uphold stoning to death and cutting off the hands of
thieves. This can become difficult to control in places like
the Punjab that have “a history of religious militancy”,
independent researcher Mansoor Raza says.
“All major militant outfits have their head offices
there. The recruits and headcount of ‘martyrs’ (a euphemism
used to refer to suicide bombers) are also from these seven
districts,” says Raza, referring to Lahore, Faisalabad,
Kasur, Sheikhupura, Gujranwala, Toba Tek Singh and Sialkot.
The number of ‘madrasah’ has grown in the Punjab, resulting
in more intolerance, and “they are immune to logic and in
adversity are quick to resort to muscle power,” he says.
Rehman adds that very few protests have been heard when
extremists carry out abuses, including toward religious
minorities and those suspected of having done immoral acts.
All these come together in a “herd mentality”, explains
Pervez Hoodbhoy, a peace activist who teaches physics at
Islamabad’s Quaid-e-Azam University. In the mid-August
lynching, he says, “Gustave Le Bon, the famous French
sociologist, would surely have used this example to bolster
his theory of social contagion which hypothesises that
crowds exert a hypnotic influence over their members.”
“Mobs behave like this when there is a total breakdown in
social order and when the moral and intellectual foundations
of a society begin to crumble,” adds Salahuddin.
Bedar warns of more episodes like the Sialkot lynching,
which was “neither the first nor the last of its kind.”
Added Bedar: “Unlearning the deeply ingrained and powerful
attitudes that instigate, support and allow such incidents
is what will ultimately make a difference. And that is the
real challenge.”
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