Target killing of doctors in Pakistan

Mohammad Ahmad

If the government uses the law available to it for public benefit, we could see a marked decline in extremist tendencies and a more cohesive society would result. Is that aim on the government’s agenda is a different question

The people of Pakistan have been unfortunate in having to witness so many killings in acts of terror that target killing of individuals go mostly unnoticed by the common man. On a number of occasions during the last few years, these target killings have involved doctors who were serving humanity. These killings are not random by any means and have a very disturbing pattern in their selection. When the targets are doctors, the disproportionate number being from the minority Shiite and Ahmadi communities is a fact too obvious to ignore. In the last twelve months alone, two Shiite doctors were target-killed in Rajanpur and Karachi with the latter incident in April this year. In March this year, Dr Shaukat Nyani belonging to the Shia Ismaili community was killed in Karachi. In August 2013 a homeopath belonging to the Ahmadi community was shot dead while attending to patients, while on May 26 Dr Mehdi Ali Qamar, a respected Ahmadi cardiologist and a US citizen on volunteer work in Chenab Nagar (Rabwah), was murdered by assailants on a motorbike while he was visiting the cemetery that houses the graves of his parents. He received 10 bullets in front of his two-year-old son who was fortunate to remain unhurt. It is reported that Dr Mehdi regularly went to the region for three or four weeks at a time to volunteer at the cardiac hospital in Chenab Nagar from Ohio where he practices cardiology. This year too, he was treating patients irrespective of their communal alignments at the Tahir Heart Institute. It can be inferred that while Mehdi knew the dangers he faced in the country where his faith put him at risk of elimination, still his compassion for humanity outweighed the risks.

Assassinations of those from minority communities who are involved in humanitarian work have a motive that goes beyond elimination. The target is their link in inter-communal interaction, which the extremists want to stop at all costs. The world of the extremist has no space for others and his mindset has no room for dissent. Such a mindset is a negation of Jinnah’s Pakistan, which was to be for all. Successive governments have been timid. Fighting terror is their international obligation as it affects global peace but fighting extremism is something that they avoid by choice as it is not an international imperative. Publication and distribution of extremist hate literature against Shiites, Ahmadis and Ismailis has not stopped as its distribution channels are run by strong religious entities funded by foreign elements with a political agenda. The political will to deal with the issue simply is not there. While the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC) provides the tools to the government, it is not put to effective use. The law that the government has a constitutional duty to implement is explicitly clear. It would be appropriate to reproduce here section 153-A of the PPC, which states that whoever: “By words, either spoken or written, or by signs, or by visible representations or otherwise, promotes or incites, or attempts to promote or incite, on grounds of religion, race, place of birth, residence, language, caste or community or any other grounds whatsoever, disharmony or feelings of enmity, hatred or ill-will between different religious, racial, language or regional groups or castes or communities: or commits, or incites any other person to commit, any act which is prejudicial to the maintenance of harmony between different religious, racial, language or regional groups or castes or communities or any groups of persons identifiable as such on any ground whatsoever, and which disturbs or is likely to disturb public tranquillity...shall be punished with imprisonment for a term which may extend to five years and with fine.”

If the government uses the law available to it for public benefit we could see a marked decline in extremist tendencies and a more cohesive society would result. Is that aim on the government’s agenda is a different question. While high profile murders like the one of the Shiite Dr Syed Ali Haider early last year caught the attention of the local media as it happened in the heart of Lahore, the assassination of the cardiologist in Chenab Nagar got little coverage in the local vernacular press. Unsurprisingly, local news channels also gave little coverage to this gruesome killing although these channels cover everything under the title of ‘breaking news’. This was perhaps of little news value to them as the victim belonged to a vulnerable section of society. It is perhaps beyond their horizon of wisdom that the murder of those doing humanitarian work is the murder of humanity and indeed a sad day for all and therefore deserves due attention. However, the news of this assassination has been covered by the international media. The Washington Post, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal and others have carried reports that do not reflect positively on Pakistan.

These assassinations and the terror attacks on these communities like those on the Hazaras in Quetta and on the Ahmadiyya places of worship in Lahore in 2010 which killed 86 Ahmadis in a single day are indicators of a systematic attempt at destroying these religious groups. If the distribution of hate material against these communities is not stopped, the resultant rise in extremist tendencies will escalate these acts of terror to the magnitude of genocide. Pakistan is a signatory to the Convention on the Punishment and Prevention of Genocide. Under the Convention, a genocide occurs when a party has the intent to destroy a religious, ethnic or racial group “in whole, or in part” and acts on that intent by killing, injuring, or deliberately causing conditions leading to the physical destruction of that group. This Convention applies to all sections of society, including private groups that perpetrate genocidal acts in a country without direct assistance from the state. Under the Responsibility to Protect clauses, all countries are obliged to recognise if such acts are taking place and take steps to punish past transgressions while preventing future acts.

The groups in Pakistan that want the Shiite and Ahmadis eliminated are well known to all and those belonging to them exercise not even a cosmetic attempt at a cover up. The local police and other intelligence agencies have information about the public meetings where such sentiments are vented and can point out the extremists easily if the government wishes to take these extremists to task. Does it have the will or grit to do so is another question. The people of Pakistan can force it do so but the general attitude of this silent majority can be summed up in an adaptation of the poem, First they came, attributed to Martin Niemöller, a German anti-Nazi theologian:

“First they came for the Shias and I did not speak out because I was not one Then they came for the Christians and I did not speak out because I was not one Then they came for the Ahmadis and I did not speak out because I was not one

Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out for me.” We should all pray it never ends up like this.