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Following editorial was published in The News on 5 November, 2007 two days after the second dose of emergency in Pakistan. Though General (reluctantly retired) Musharraf lifted the emergency on 15 December, 2007, conditions today are either same or even worse as they were at the time of imposition of emergency. Emergency or no emergency unfortunately this editorial is still relevent to prevalent uncertain political conditions in Paksitan.

FILLING THE JAILS

The country's jails are fast filling up as ever greater numbers of miscreants and extremists, dangerous men and women all, arrive at their gates. They come by the van-load, bumped and bruised, battered and beaten, having been detained after being caught red-handed in the act of committing a felony -- a felony usually taking the form of standing in the road and waving a banner or, at the more serious end of the spectrum, shouting a slogan. This includes hundreds of lawyers who have been brutally beaten and arrested nationwide as well as members of civil society voicing their protest against the whims of one man bent on pushing the country to ruin. Some of those newly sampling life in jail have clearly crossed the boundary into out-and-out terrorism -- they have declared themselves to be politicians, no less, and have been duly carried off to await an uncertain fate.

Curiously, none of these dangers to the security of the nation appear to have been -- at the time of their arrest or detention -- in possession of anything more lethal than a fine legal mind, a couple of ball-pens and some hastily scribbled notes. Some of them come equipped with the kind of intellect that can stop a man dead in his tracks at a hundred meters. Others possess yet more dangerous weaponry -- they have the ability to string half-a-dozen words together coherently whilst at the same time holding several conflicting ideas in their head at the same time -- self-evidently, they are all individuals likely to shake the pillars of society to their foundations. Which is why they are being locked up – in a most ruthless manner by the police, the veritable handmaiden of the dictatorship, which is now emboldened by the strong defence that the president took for them in his 'emergency proclamation'.

Yet more curiously, there appears to be a positive dearth of arrests of those who publicly carry a range of exploding and projectile weaponry, are unafraid to use it against officers of the state and the citizenry, and are able to flout any and every law that the land may have with complete impunity and cut the heads from those who displease them. These paragons of virtue regularly issue threats to kill, have by their own admission carried out those threats and promise to deliver more of the same in the future. Clearly, these men present no threat whatsoever to the state, which has itself displayed its gratitude by ceding large tracts of scenic countryside and entire local administrations into their tender care.

Little of this will have been seen by the average citizen over the last three days as the electronic media has been called into the headmaster's office for a severe talking-to on the matter of what they can or cannot report or comment on. Screens will remain dark until the powers that be and the broadcasters reach an accommodation. The print media are feeling a cautious way forward in the new environment and newspapers are now the most accessible news source -- in a country where some 60 per cent of the population is illiterate. It might be reasonably wondered how long it will be before their pages start appearing with large blank areas -- presumably put there for people unable to read.

The old adage 'Don't shoot me I'm only the messenger' seems to have failed to surface in the collective minds of the latest dispensation, and the Orwellian prospect of the nation's best and brightest landing up behind bars while self-confessed cold-blooded murderers wander at will, looms large for all to see. Or not. Shooting the messenger is only an option when you don't want to hear the news he bears, but to quote another equally ancient adage -- 'There are none so deaf as those who don't want to hear.'
(Courtesy: www.the news.com.pk)

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