Intizar — an unequivocal call for abolition of death penalty

With its final performance, 'Intizar', at the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture, the week-long ‘Bus Kar Do’ campaign, calling for abolition of death penalty, wound up on Tuesday evening.

The campaign was run by Lahore-based Justice Project Pakistan, Azad Theatre, and Highlight Arts. The performance coincided with the World Day Against Death Penalty falling on October 10.

Travelling all the way by special bus from Lahore to Karachi, stopping en route at Sahiwal, Sukkur, and Hyderabad and performing at these places too, the troupe staged its final performance in Karachi on Tuesday.

In the tradition of street theatre, the act was performed out in the open courtyard without the theatre paraphernalia like sets and lighting. Yet the actors managed to convey their message in a very profound way.

The message was the weaknesses of the justice dispensation system whereby loopholes in the law often send the innocent to the gallows, as a result of exploitation by selfish, dishonest officials or various caveats.

This particular musical skit enacted the story of a teenager, Owais, who mysteriously disappears from among his group of friends. The whole locality is in a frightening quandary but the political elder with his oily tongue assures the residents that the killer would be apprehended soon and orders the police official to arrest him by the evening.

The police officer takes a real short-cut and randomly arrests one of the cronies of the teenager who implores to be released, with protestations of his innocence.

However, the police officer is in no mood to listen. The denouement of the play is that Owais, who actually is a worker from a remote part of Pakistan and has come to a big city to eke out a living, finally goes to the gallows despite his innocence.

Given its sombre theme, the scenes were often depressing, what with shrouded dead bodies of convicts/victims being carried, but it drove home a very profound message, something that would give us all real food for thought.

What made it all even more intense was the rendition of the songs by Sarfaraz Ansari, in his deep, rich voice, complete with those cadences and voice modulations that make a song impactful.

The Punjabi lyrics were so reflective of our treasured cultural heritage of the province. Besides, they really reflected the tragedy the play was depicting; Ansari really injected feeling into the songs.

Ryan Van Winkle, a US citizen presently associated with the Highlight Arts, UK, and is based in Edinburgh, Scotland, while talking to The News, said that while he did not advocate complete and total abolition of the death penalty right away, he felt that the state should not meddle with the justice dispensation system beyond a certain limit.

Before sentencing a convict to the ultimate punishment, a whole set of factors should be considered that motivated the crime, plus the circumstances of the perpetrator of the crime.

The pun, Bus Kar Do, is actually supposed to convey the idea of the bus that has brought the troupe over and is an exhortation to terminate the system of capital punishment.