Protesting for justice

Some weeks ago, we saw families gather on a main road in Quetta, with the bodies of Hazara men who had been killed in an attack. They sought justice for the victims – justice that somehow seems to be the least available thing in the country. Now, again, we have seen people from the Janikhel tehsil of Bannu sit in similar protest with the families of four slain teenage boys, between 13 and 17 years, outside the Janikhel police station to seek justice for the boys. The Janikhel families had announced a protest march to Islamabad, after negotiations had failed. However, in a promising turn of events, now it seems negotiations have worked out and the government has promised an investigation, compensation and justice.

While it is good to see some negotiations have taken place, we must say that what happened should never have occurred in the first place. The teenagers were killed after they had gone into a forest to hunt quail and later buried in shallow graves. It is not known who was responsible or why the crime was committed. Bannu is a district that has experienced violence again and again. But the issue is one that affects people all across Pakistan. The state must offer security to its people and not leave it to families to demand justice, investigation and action when a crime is committed. This is especially true when the crime is as heinous as the one in Bannu, directed against four children – and the people fele this dispossessed. Families have a right to justice without carrying the bodies of loved ones from one place to another.

This is a question of humanity and not of politics or revenge. Can short-term negotiations bring a lasting end to a situation in which families need to put bodies on the streets and refuse to bury them in order to seek justice for their loved ones? As human rights groups have demanded, the deaths need to be investigated and as a gesture of humanity to all Pakistanis, steps taken to ensure that the state takes up cases where people are murdered without any information as to the precise sequence of events. It is obvious that the parents of the four boys will do all they can to seek justice for them. It is time to restore rule of law in the area and bring it back into the mainstream of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa so that justice can be delivered, the writ of the law can hold, and crimes such as these are avoided and the perpetrators brought to justice as should happen in any state with a working order of government.