Pots have a habit of calling kettles
black. The Punjab police killing of unarmed PAT workers in Model Town is just as
egregious and criminal as American police killing a minimum of two unarmed
black men every week. America has no room to anoint itself as the champion of
human rights when a significant portion of its population suffers under the “driving
while black” and “flying while Muslim” syndromes.
For more than a decade,
Pakistanis have taken to murdering physicians or citizens if they are Ahmadi,
Shia or Christian. Entire families have been gunned down or victims have been
killed in front of their children. The murderers invariably ride away on their
motorbikes, and no one has been apprehended or charged with these murders. This
is classic enabling behavior. The state is to have tenderness and affection for
each citizen; what of the one that does absolutely nothing about these episodes?
It might as well have been holding the gun.
The PML (N) government has
been on the path of self-aggrandizement and minimal achievement in this round
of governance and now it is badly besieged. The previous PPP government
similarly did nothing; in fact one of its own members Governor Salman Taseer
was gunned down by a fanatical bodyguard. And the shameful elation of members
of the lawyer community, the pro bono defense of the killer and showering him
with rose petals is evidence of a society gone mad.
And even more unspeakably
heartbreaking is the murder of Ahmadi children a few weeks ago with no
condemnation or action by the government.
Pakistan is young yet at 65 and
democracy in Pakistan younger still. America is 238 years old and has been
blessed with democracy for its entire life. Democracy is a noisy, evolutionary
process. The slave trade, the Tuskegee syphilis experiment by the US Public
Health Service on African-American men, and the continued harassment and murder
of blacks in the United States are a smear on its democracy and its vaunted
claims of pluralism, diversity and tolerance.
It is well established statistically
that a young black male is a lot more likely to be pulled over by police than
any other race. It’s a shame that black families in the United States train
their children on how to behave if they are stopped by police: keep hands on
the steering wheel, move only when instructed and address the police officer
with “sir”. These families know that the deeply entrenched racial hatred in
America boils over within its police force, and instead of dealing with their
sons the way the sons of white families are treated, they are liable to be
recipients of that terrible knock on their door that bears the news of death.
According to the FBI’s
most recent accounts of “justifiable homicide,” in the seven years between 2005
and 2012, a white officer used deadly force against a black person almost two times every week. Of those black
persons killed, nearly one in every five was
under 21 years of age. These are probably severe underestimates as they are
based on self-report by police departments and only 750 of the 17,000 law
enforcement agencies participated. In 2007, a joint effort by ColorLines and the Chicago Reporter
examined police shootings in the 10 largest cities in the U.S.,
and in every city, African Americans comprised a disproportionately large
percentage of those killed. Nationally, African Americans are arrested three times more frequently
than their white counterparts, although African Americans make up only 12
percent of the population.
19-year old
African-American Renisha McBride was killed by Theodore Wafer, a white middle
aged man, for simply knocking on his door at 4:30 a.m. He thought a home
invasion was about to occur and instead of calling the police he chose to shoot
her in the face. Wafer was found guilty of second-degree murder but Renisha is
gone, as is the fate of so many Trayvon Martins and Renishas all over the
country on an ongoing basis.
Whether a police
officer pulls the trigger or the state simply looks away when citizens murder on
the basis of race, ethnicity or religion, comes essentially to the same thing.
Citizens are targeted in Pakistan because of their belief system and Americans
are killed in their own country because they are not white.
The other commonality
in the murder of innocents in the two countries is the easy availability of
guns. The NRA, National Rifle Association, is the most powerful lobby in the US.
The right to be armed is enshrined in the US constitution. Despite wholescale
massacres like the Connecticut school shootings Americans want to hold onto
their assault rifles for dear life. Presidential candidates and even elected
presidents try to stay away from the gun control issue for fear of their
popularity plummeting.
The influx of weapons
into Pakistan after the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, particularly the
Kalashnikov, seems to have permanently changed society. Citizens have no
protection from the police and there is an absence of due process. Armed
bodyguards are as common as cars. No law exists though, that affirms a citizen’s
right to carry a weapon. Yet why would governments in recent memory care about
the death wreaked by guns in Pakistan when political and governmental leaders
travel with bullet-proof vests, bullet proof cars and armed cars front, back
and sideways.
APPNA, Association of
Physicians of Pakistani Descent of North America, in its annual convention last
week did an awesome job of focusing attention on the killing of minorities in
Pakistan. Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia was the keynote speaker addressing a crowd
of 3000. Just the day before, Ferguson Missouri had been placed under curfew to
control protestors after the police shooting of unarmed 18-year old Michael
Brown. Addressing the issue of sectarian killing in Pakistan, Sen. Kaine advised
Pakistani-American physicians to take American pluralism, diversity and
tolerance to Pakistan to help deal with the sectarian violence there. Really
Senator? Care to look at your trigger-happy police force and the fires of
racism in your own backyard? But individual and governmental American hubris
only makes those blinders bigger.
Discussions of the
killing of Michael Brown reveal how deeply embedded racial hatred is in American
society. “He was 6 foot 4 inches”, “he had just robbed a store” are some inane
statements. The fact that he was unarmed and had his hands raised saying “my
hands are up” make no difference. Religious and sectarian hatred has putrefied
Pakistan. People are friendly until they find out that the other person is
Ahmadi, Shia or Christian; and then just because of that they deserve to die.
In both the US and
Pakistan, generations have been bathed in racial or religious hatred. It seems
the only controllable thing in this equation is the availability of guns. And
funnily, if the government puts its mind to it, de-weaponization is possible in
Pakistan. Not so in the US, courtesy the NRA. And with the fact that American
police guns down black youth on a regular basis, the prognosis in the US is a
lot grimmer than it is in Pakistan. And makes the Missouri protestors’ placard “stop
killing us” even more poignant.
