PM’s statement

This refers to the news report ‘PM Imran Khan supports public hanging, castration for sex offenders’ (Sep 15). History proves that the ‘violence for violence’ strategy never produced desired results of peace. Brutal punishments often result in more chaos and increased crimes. Rivers of blood caused by foreign invasions, genocides, crusades and ruthless use of force by states made societies inhumane. It was the literary and arts movements during the Renaissance which diverted the attention and energies of nations from war, crime and violence to science, arts and peaceful coexistence, resulting in the wonderful spree of inventions and industrialisation. We expected from our highly educated PM – who also has international exposure – to have a completely different take on the course of action. But either PM Imran Khan is playing to the gallery to get political mileage or he harbours the same primitive inkling of countering violence with violence. In both cases, it is quite dangerous. Leaders are not expected to be swayed by harmful public sentiments. They are expected to guide the people. It is true that the intensity and nature of the motorway incident is highly condemnable. But there are several other ways and strategies to deal with such crimes.

In our society, women are generally considered subordinate to men. They are asked to stay at home and only go out with male guardians. After the motorway incident, we saw how the woman was blamed for going out at night alone. Blaming women for rape and other kind of violence indirectly provide justification to a few people to commit a crime with impunity. The PM and other top leadership must invest their energies to counter such victim-blaming proclivities in our society instead of dehumanising our future generation.

Gulsher Panhwer

Johi