Adil Najam
Report from News (21 February, 2007):
A fanatic shot dead Punjab Minister for Social Welfare Zill-e-Huma Usman “for not adopting the Muslim dress code” at a political meeting here at the PML House on Tuesday. A party worker caught the accused, Maulvi Sarwar, and handed him over to the Civil Lines Police. Huma was at the PML House to hold an open Kachehry. As she was busy meeting the PML women activists, the accused sitting in the audience approached her with a pistol and pumped bullets into her head from a point-blank range… The accused, M Sarwar Mughal – popularly known as Maulvi Sarwar – is a resident of Baghbnapura in Gujranwala. Two police stations of Gujranwala and the Tibbi police of Lahore had booked Maulvi Sarwar for the murder of six women, but he was acquitted for want of sufficient evidence. His alleged spree of killing “immoral” women started in the year 2002. In his confession statement before the police on Tuesday, he said he was opposed to women holding public office. He added that after he read in the newspaper that the minister was holding an open court, he decided to kill her.
Sometimes you just wonder why! Sometimes you just want to give up!
I have been feeling sad and numb and down and dejected all day. I heard about the brutal murder of Punjab Minister Zile Huma Usman’s murder by a crazed fanatic some 10 hours ago. And I have been in utter shock.
I have tossed and turned. I had thought earlier that I would not even write about it. What is the use? When a society goes so mad that a woman is killed just because she is a woman, what can a blog post do. Just ignite more silly debates; more childish heckling; more immature point-scoring; trying to show how smart you are; or, more likely, trying to show how idiotic others are; reaffirming your own belief that you are always right, and everyone else is always wrong; single-track chest thumping; self-righteous finger-pointing. No remorse. No compassion; not a word of sympathy; not a shred of caring. All there is, is anger; getting high on our own anger; anger for its own sake; getting so very angry that you even forget what or who you are angry at.
But now I do want to write about this. We, as a society, have some serious thinking to do.
What killed Zille Huma Usman? Not religion. Not madness. But anger. Uncontrolled anger.
A society that seems to be fueled by anger. No conversation is seen to be legitimate unless it is an angry conversation. And the solution to everything seems to be violence. ‘Kill the infidels’ say the believers. ‘Kill the mullahs’ shout the modernists. ‘Hang them by the gallows.’ ‘Put them in boats and let them sink.’ ‘Death is what they deserve.’ We have heard it all right here. I suspect we will hear it again. That dastardly, self-righteous anger. This violence in the language, as Zille Huma so tragically found, becomes the violence of bloodshed all too easily. Today it was in the name of religion. Tomorrow it will be something else.
So, do me a favor folks. Give her some dignity. Hold your anger. Think about what happened. Ponder. And pause. For the sake of whatever is sacred to you; please pause!
An innocent woman’s life has already been taken by our inability to put a lid on our passions and our anger. Let us please not make a tamasha out of her death by making her a poster child for whatever ’cause’ we are parading for right now.
I don’t think the press should be expected to run around covering every crime case.
However, where I feel the media needs to do more is to cover the systemic issues, debate various possible solutions (including what the government is doing or claiming to be doing) so that people are able to form well
informed opinions. And it is in this regard that our media has some improving to do. Unlike reporting on individual cases, discussing such issues in an informative and constructive way is an important responsibility of the media.
If we have free and fair elections today, and the political parties take different positions on issues like police reforms or devolution, most of us, even the supposedly well educated readers of English dailies would be pretty clueless on who to support and why.
The media has not been interested in informing public opinion, and the readers are also not interested in being informed, they enjoy reading someone like Kamran Shafi or Ayaz Amir jerk off against the government more than a down to earth analysis.
I will look into it eidee — maybe mention it in my column
MQ — no offence i think you need to chill out — why should i be personally in the know of the proceedings of each and every hit and run case — if cases are not held or delayed you want journalists to go order the judges to hold a hearing ??? that is absurd — first get your understanding of the primary function of a press right and then we can discuss such things
the standoff is not over — its been reported in the press — read the papers MQ and you will find out
lahori — it was news for a while — just like paris hilton’s jumping bail will be for a while — no offence but you sound like one of those annoying expats who think that they have all the solutions to what ails their home country — and by the way, i am in a position to tell you that as for my newspaper there was never any pressure on us to not write about it — and we did cover it extensively, had columnists write on it and so on
Omar Quraishi,
[quote]”I don’t know what happened in that case but i presume lack of eyewitnesses would have meant that the woman is probably not in jail and probably some driver would have taken the blame â€
Sorry for the distraction.
[quote comment=”35590″]Bought off the press — really? that is news to me — i dont remember being paid anything or even offered by anyone — oh shoot[/quote]
Check with your colleagues or newspaper owners about who took off with your check ;-)
Joking. But buying off need not be monetary only, power is the currency.
[quote comment=”35588″]lahori — i am sorry but a court would have seen it as an accident — speeding may be deliberate but deaths caused by speeding at most are equated by the courts with manslaughter not murder[/quote]
Manslaughter, murder, you can choose the word. The fact is that a kid died and the person who caused the death is absconding.
I am not sure what the court would have decided. But the judge DID decide to cancel the Nirala guys bail and that says something abut what the judge thought.
Why is the absconding of this rich kid not a story. If Paris Hilton had run someone over and then jumped bail, I bet it woul be worldwide news inclduing in Pakistan. Here is a simialr case of a rich kid of fame but utter silence on why he has run away from the law. How come this is not a story.
Also, can anyone confirm if he was really at a high level Basant party in an old Lahore haveli this week?