Pakistan - Issues that can’t be pushed under carpet

Tribute to Sabeen and the ways of our security agencies

If those who killed Sabeen Mahmud thought that she would be forgotten soon they must have discovered by now that they were mightily mistaken. If the idea was to deter others from raising their voice in protest, this too has failed to happen. That a Senator pointed out in the House of Federation that she was assassinated after she made available the platform of her NGO for discussion on missing persons indicates that people continue to find a correlation between the two. The issue of the missing persons and of extrajudicial killings in Balochistan cannot be simply pushed under the carpet either. It was futile to hope that with the cancellation of a seminar in LUMS the issue would not be agitated on the campuses of other universities. Despite the refusal by Karachi University administration to allow holding of the seminar, the event was organised inside the university campus by dissenting teachers and students. They invited the three speakers who had addressed the gathering organised by Sabeen Mahmud with a large banner in the background reading ‘Baloch missing persons and the role of state and society’.

There is a need for the agencies to consider why they are mentioned whenever the issue of disappearances in Balochistan comes under discussion. Sabeen Mahmud’s assassination and the issue of the missing Baloch got combined in the Senate as well on Wednesday. The Upper House paid rich tributes to Mahmud for her services for human rights and urged the government to arrest her murderers. It was simultaneously reiterated that there was a need for legislation to bring the intelligence agencies under the ambit of law in order to protect them from unsubstantiated allegations of involvement in extra-judicial killings, enforced disappearances and grave human rights violations.

That a couple of Karachi University teachers have recently been assassinated by target killers, did not deter others to form a body that calls itself University Teachers Against War and Oppression. Fear cannot silence those with strong commitments.