The Friday’s Rage

All day Friday most of us stayed home glued to our televisions screens watching in horror violent agitations spreading like jungle fires across city after city throughout Pakistan. At sunset, a tour of Karachi exposed more confusion.

Narrating tales of death and destruction of a day that was dedicated to demonstrate our love for Holy Prophet (Peace be upon him) registering highest television viewership’s for the year may be a mere waste of ink or paper! Yet it would be adding insult to injury if one fails to mention the destruction of Karachi city’s premiere cultural assets including the sixty-five year old Nishat cinema, or equally important Prince, Capri, and Bambino Cinemas, few buildings that remain of historic importance such as the old church gutted at Mardan (1937) or the one at Essa Nagri in Karachi and you have a disaster for an already entertainment starved and increasingly isolated nation.

One could condemn obliteration of cinemas and churches and blame a regrettable rise in religious extremism in our society. However it may not hurt to examine some of the malicious sermons issued over our television screen and internet or distributed on footpaths outside mosques abusing Sufis, Shiites, Barelvis, Qadianis, Hindus, Christians, and anyone else who was not a Wahabi Sunni, or fundamentalist, Muslim. They still remain free to go around condemning everything else except the state censured set of edicts.

On Friday night to some of the not-so-religious young and amazingly inarticulate protestors, exhausted by the daylong demonstrations and tear-gas but still insisted that the Yankee film was the reason for the violence they caused. Their inability to explain need to destroy private property, banks, insurance and chamber of commerce buildings, CNG Stations and petrol-pumps, toll-plazas and even Suzuki-vans or motorbikes with vengeance remains incomprehensible and may require deep soul-searching by our civil and military elite as to how did this nation go wrong during the last 65 years.

The Federal government declared an impromptu public holiday fearing tens of thousands of demonstrators might take to the streets on Friday. Authorities also decided to shut down mobile phone networks across the country hoping that would dilute some of the efforts by the miscreants to create havoc. But the subsequent events proved them to be extremely naïve, forcing Rahman Malik to again blame the terrorists and Mr. Kaira, Punjab government for all that went wrong!

People from all walks of life came out that Friday afternoon demanding to register their protest against Nakoula Basseley Nakoula and his film ‘Innocence of Muslims’. However protests quickly turned into a shock for the nation due to the unexpected violence that later met with universal condemnation.

Was the violence in Karachi caused by the Jamaat-ud-Dawa, JUI (F), Jama’at-e-Islami and other right-wing parties who showed no hesitation in accommodating heavily armed miscreants in their rallies?

Journalists in Islamabad claim that there was a substantial presence of locals amongst demonstrators. There was also a large presence of people from adjoining settlements and shanty towns. Mr. Kaira went on to claim that large number of protestors was from nearby Afghan bastis and madaressahs. Observers suggested that that the scenario was not much different in Peshawar either! But in all three cases there was one thing in common – when hell broke loose the ones left to pick the fight appeared to have nothing to loose at all!

Lately the country appears to be free-falling in a bottomless pit! The Government’s response to the Baldia factory fire cannot be termed responsible or honourable. Ten days later not even the list of workers burnt to death has been made public. Neither the handing over of the dead bodies to relatives nor the payment of compensated has been completed.

While the Chief Minister and the Federal Interior Minister have been appealing to the factory-owners to help the inquiry commission ascertain cause of the fire and consequential death and destruction, they are going around getting fresh the bail before-arrest. The Legal fraternity seems to have little faith in the judicial commission setup under Justice (retired) Zahid Qurban Alvi.

One of the top legal minds confided during a meeting of 72 trade unions, left parties, students and human rights organisations last Saturday that the way the case was proceeding, there was no hope for conviction of the accused factory owners.

None of the factories in the area have bothered to take any corrective actions nor has the government have bothered to hold any of its functionaries responsible for the obvious lapse. Sadly doors, windows remain sealed, fire, search and rescue services in the same old pathetic state, and worse most workers across the industrial areas remain without any appointment letters, outside the Social Security and EOBI net.

Once the dust settle, workers at Baldia factory that were not issued appointment letters after years of service will not be acknowledged as legitimate employees and therefore will continue to run from pillar to post for the promised rose gardens. Workers would have poured their hearts out if the government had decided to hold public hearings or deputed one of the cabinet advisors to look at the industrial relations in the province.

On 9/15 Coca Cola factory located not far from M/s Ali Enterprises closed gates over 106 fulltime workers who had spent most of years of their lives toiling for that company. Refusing the paltry sums of money under ‘Voluntary Separation Scheme’ they appealed to the management and the Services Tribunal that after putting in 20 or 30 years of service they would not have any chance to compete for a job in a market lined by over a million unemployed!

However they were advised by the management to go back to the court of law, knowing full well that the hapless workers would die in the process of trying to challenge the tit-bits that they had been offered and no court of law or judicial commission will ever award them millions that they may deserve.

When workers are stopped at the gate of a factory they become as if they were carrying a contagious disease. In these times of severe insecurity others try to hide themselves worried that they too might get into trouble and loose their jobs. Once thoroughly humiliated the younger ones may opt for snatching phones, cars or just plain assume kidnappings and dacoities for a profession and the older ones ends-up even committing suicides –while the myopic amongst us continue to worry about the rise in religious extremism!

May be the Ahle Safa, Murdood-e-harm of Faiz’s poem Hum Dekhain ge are just waiting for the day:

“When the mountains of oppression and cruelty

Will float like carded cotton

Under the feet of the oppressed

This earth will quake

And over the head of the rulers

Lightening will thunder”

(translated by Syed Mohsin Akhtar)