What matches the teargas smoke in Islamabad as the rumours afloat, and much deliberate misinformation. For example, Parvez Elahi has asserted that the govt used chemical weapons for crowd control, which is plain nonsense, unless he meant that excessive use of tear gas is tantamount to use of chemical weapons. Similarly, he insisted that police had used conventional ammunition against the protesters. He probably does not know that rubber bullets too can cause fatalities.
Adding to the confusion by passing on opinion and conjecture as news, was ARY. It sometimes seemed that its anchors were manufacturing news by the minute, so that it was not possible to distinguish this from the real news they were reporting.
However, the following cannot be lightly denied or defended.
- By the sheer numbers of tear gas shells used in the operation, heaps of which were shown by nearly every TV channel, it can fairly be concluded that the use of force was excessive to the extent of being unconscionable, and totally uncalled for.
- In real time one could see that the protesters were peaceful till they encountered tear gas shelling and firing by the police.
The questions which arise from this show of excessive force are as follows:
–Why was this level of police violence deemed essential?
The standard answer one gets is that the protesters could not be allowed to occupy and vandalize certain hallowed buildings which symbolize the prestige of the state.
–The next question is whether the police did in fact succeed in preventing the occupation of these haloed sites?
The answer is that the police succeeded in stopping the occupation of one building but failed in doing so in the case of the second one.
–So, when the protesters succeeded in occupying one of the buildings, did they vandalize it? The answer is “NO”–and they did not proceed beyond its grounds.
–So why did the protesters not vandalize this building nor tried to enter it?
Just a handful of army soldiers guarding this building, without having to raise their weapons, requested the protesters not proceed any further, and that was enough. And secondly, why should there have been any fear of vandalism from a disciplined crowd that had camped a mere 500 yards from these buildings for over a fortnight without resorting to any violence!
–So, would it not be correct to conclude that police violence was entirely unnecessary? How did this violence help beyond killing a few people, and hospitalizing about 500?
And how did this violence save from desecration certain buildings carrying the prestige of the state? But more fundamentally, can anyone explain just how does the prestige of the state get damaged if a Pakistani building, no matter how prestigious, gets occupied by peaceful Pakistani protesters?
So did these two sacrosanct buildings really represent the prestige of the state in this instance, or did their occupation bruise the tender egos of those who have made themselves believe that they somehow personify the state?
Thus, the government ended up resorting to violence which once again ended up taking the lives of innocent Pakistanis and wounding hundreds–and only for the sake of feeding bloated egos?
The buildings that needed to be denied to the protesters were nothing more than symbols for a tottering government which badly needs to reassert its writ. And this writ would not have needed any such re-assertion, if this government had governed instead of ruling. Indeed, it was a little late in the day to have woken up to the erosion of their writ, and criminal to then have opted for force as a means to enforce this. The govt still does not seem to have realized that it is credibility and not force on which the writ of any govt rests.
But while their writ was assiduously being sought to be established through the barrel of the gun, another sordid drama was taking place in Islamabad. The crew of every TV channel, except two, were being violently attacked in typical Gullu Butt style by the police! I suppose this too was being done to establish the writ of the govt which got lost somewhere in the hubris of power!