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| Edited By: |Source: DNA |Updated: Apr 29, 2015, 05:10 AM IST
Who killed Sabeen Mahmud? While Pakistani investigators get on with the task of identifying the actual killers who gunned down the activist in Karachi last week, the question is really about the forces behind the hand that pulled the trigger. And the answer points to sections of a State intolerant to voices raised in dissent, particularly when it comes to issues such as insurgency in Balochistan.
The killing of the much loved activist spotlights not just the shrinking space for free debate in a fragmented society but also the volatile situation in Balochistan, the largest of Pakistan’s provinces bordering Afghanistan and Iran, resource-rich and also the poorest where a military operation has been underway for many years to suppress a separatist movement.
The chronology of events is evidence enough to make the link between Mahmud’s murder on the evening of April 24 and the situation in Balochistan, where there have been allegations of gross human rights abuses and where thousands of people have gone missing over the years. The director of The Second Floor (T2F), described on its website as a “community space for open dialogue”, was driving home with her mother when unidentified gunmen opened fire in the city’s upscale Defence locality. The 40-year-old received five bullets and died on the way to the hospital while her mother was in a critical condition.
Just hours earlier, T2F had hosted a talk on Unsilencing Balochistan Take 2 by prominent Baloch activists to focus on rights abuses in the province. The same talk was originally scheduled to be held at the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) but was cancelled, reportedly at the instance of Pakistan’s spy agency ISI. The courageous, outspoken Mahmud, who has been the focus of rightwing ire for her liberal views, had then taken the decision to organise the event in Karachi.
Everybody knows who killed her and why, Mama Qadeer Baloch, who had addressed the gathering that evening, told a reporter. The 72-year-old, whose son went missing in 2009 and whose mutilated body was found two years later, had last year led a 3,000 km march from Quetta to Islamabad. As they analyse the ramifications of what Mahmud’s killing holds for Pakistani civil society, others have voiced the same suspicions. The demand for Baloch independence threatens the idea of a unified Pakistan and therefore the crackdown on the people of Balochistan — and those who speak up for them. The parallels with the situation in Kashmir and Pakistan’s animus with India are not just obvious but ironical too.
In a country where democracy is still taking baby steps and where the military continues to be all powerful, Mahmud is not the only one to have been killed. And Balochistan not the only issue. There have others before her, some silenced forever and others like Malala Yousufzai who survived the bullet. Malala has become a celebrated spokesperson for women’s education but from foreign lands, unable to return home. Their ‘causes’ have all been different, their motive the same — to push for a more inclusive, tolerant society that can withstand the forces of extreme violence and extreme regressive thought.
According to one columnist, to be liberal and outspoken in the Pakistan of today is tantamount to painting a target in the middle of your forehead. And Mahmud herself had told a magazine, “Fear is just a line in your head… You can choose what side of that line you want to be on.”
She chose her side. And paid for it. As the crisis for open discourse deepens, how many more will join the list of casualties?
