VIEWPOINT: A solemn affair

This Monday was the third anniversary of the Karsaz bombing. Prominent PPP leaders came to the venue where a monument now stands to an estimated 150 party workers, sympathisers, and just curious onlookers who had gathered to welcome PPP leader Benazir Bhutto home after many years of self-exile, but ended up dead.
The perpetrators had wanted to kill Benazir, but missed her at Karsaz because she had moved away from her special bus-top stand for a few minutes, killing instead her supporters and causing severe injuries to countless others. Whosoever wanted to eliminate the PPP leader made sure she did not get away alive the next time from her public meeting in Rawalpindi's Liaquat Bagh. She was murdered along with 24 people, most of them party workers.
So what has the party leadership been doing about the murders all this while? This year's anniversary ritual, like the year before, and another one before it, brought Sindh Chief Minister Qaim Ali Shah to Karsaz memorial in the evening along with ministers and party leaders. Interior Minister Rehman Malik came too later at night.
They laid wreaths at the memorial site, recited the Holy Quran and offered 'Fateha'. It was a solemn affair, as death anniversaries tend to be. That though is how ordinary, helpless people remember violent deaths of their near and dear ones, their desire to bring the perpetrators to justice never dying. Not powerful government leaders like the Sindh Chief Minister, the Interior Minister, or the slain leader's spouse Asif Ali Zardari, who is President of this country. The PPP came to power within months of the murders both at the Centre and in Sindh. Its leadership should have launched thorough investigations into the two incidents to bring the perpetrators to justice. Instead, it chose to do nothing in the case of Karsaz bombing.
For the Liaquat Bagh attack, it launched an expensive but inconsequential UN inquiry, which was never meant to be a criminal investigation; its mission was restricted to fact-finding. However, the expectation was that once the report was ready, the next step would be a criminal investigation based on these facts. But again, nothing significant happened.
As a matter of fact, right at the outset President Zardari had tried to deal with all the questions hanging over the killings by declaring 'Democracy Is the Best Revenge.' It is a nice sounding slogan, but is deeply flawed as an argument. Revenge seeking is not a civilised pursuit, getting to the truth and brining perpetrators to justice is.
In any case, inherent in the "Democracy Is..." line is the supposition that we know the perpetrator(s) but a democratic government has better things to do than to investigate large-scale murder of innocent people. The President may be prepared to forget and forgive. It is natural for all others who lost their near and dear ones in the two attacks as well as concerned citizens, who believe in the rule of law, to want justice. The PPP rank and file too wants the same for the killers of their leader.
Senator Safdar Abbasi, a close associate of Benzir Bhutto, seemed to voice the thinking of fellow party workers and others when, while speaking at the Karsaz anniversary, he appealed to Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry to take suo motu notice and order a judicial investigation into the two incidents. Abbasi is not the first person to invoke the apex court's suo motu powers. More and more people are looking towards a regenerated judiciary to provide redress because it inspires trust.
Disillusionment bred by governmental inaction has urged people to latch on to the judiciary to seek redress whether it is the case of the 'disappeared' persons, lynching of two brothers in Sialkot, wrongdoing in public sector entities, the sugar industry acting as a cartel to make an exorbitant increase in the price of this essential commodity, or out-of-turn promotions in higher echelons of bureaucracy. The judges are now being asked to order a judicial inquiry into the two deadly bombings because the government has failed to do its duty.
That the perpetrators of such horrific violence could be allowed to go unpunished is shocking beyond belief. Ignoring such loss of human life would be unthinkable in any functioning democracy. But in our case, we do not know even the exact number of casualties in the Karsaz bombing. Different media sources quote different figures. Some put the number at 60, others say over 150 people were killed; still others claim 180 people died. Had there been a proper investigation into this carnage, we would at least have an accurate casualty figure.
Similarly, the criminal investigation the government launched as a follow-up to the UN mission's fact-finding report lacks seriousness of purpose. That is obvious from its handling of two important elements of the report. It needs to be recalled that the UN report had named President Zardari's close confidantes Interior Minister Rehman Malik and Sindh Home Minister Zulfiqar Mirza - who were in charge of Benazir's security - for negligence, and the concerned police and intelligence officials for having acted in a questionable manner. Some punitive measures were taken against the said officials, but the President decided to absolve both Malik and Mirza of any responsibility, excluding them from the investigations process.
More important, the special committee the Prime Minister had set up to uncover the truth about hasty hosing down of the crime scene declared completion of its task after giving a clean chit to the main suspects, and without pinning responsibility on anyone else. The murder case has remained stuck in an anti-terrorism court because the investigating agencies, especially FIA, are yet to offer full co-operation to the court. Nothing is expected to come out of these proceedings.
Both the Karsaz and the Liaquat Bagh bombings that aimed to take out the PPP leader are no ordinary crimes, and hence require extraordinary measures to get to the truth. So far as the facts are concerned, the UN inquiry commission report contains sufficient material to help the government prepare a strong legal case.
Considering the possibility of certain powerful elements' involvement in the crime, the government should set up a special tribunal, comprising serving judges from the superior judiciary. And needless to say, the judges as well as the witnesses must be provided fool-proof security. The PPP government owes this to its slain leader; scores of innocent people who lost their lives in the butchery, and many others who suffered lifelong disabilities in the two incidents. If the government feels it is powerless to do the right thing, it should at least drop the pretence that it has done all it could to bring the killer(s) of so many innocent people to justice.
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