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| Sexual violence in sinking Pakistan |
We were busy until five young men standing on a rock drowned while waiting for a helicopter, until their video came to our WhatsApp group.
There was a flood, people were dying, houses were being destroyed, dead cattle were lying on the roadsides, caravans were moving with wheelbarrows of goods on their heads, ready crops were drowning, grains stored for the whole year were water. I was swept away.
The dry rivers, the rivers whose names we had forgotten, were returning to smell their old ways and meeting the settlements built along the river courses.
The weather watchers were telling that the rains of Karachi are long and painful, but beyond Karachi is Pakistan and it is very big.
The floods that have come out from the rains in the mountains have no way out, there are roads, bridges, mud houses, and in some places there are entire settlements.
This disaster did not come stealthily, all the signs were there, but we were a bit busy.
Not just the military, not just the politicians, not just the police and the courts, all of us, the sellers and buyers of news, were busy. We all were trying to find out whether Shahbaz Gul was stripped or not, tortured or not.
I have probably never heard the word sexual violence on television as many times in my life as I did in the first days of the flood.
Did it happen or not, how did it happen, who did it, show the evidence, why didn't the medical check-up take place, shame should come on the state or Shahbaz Gul, accuse someone of sedition (we didn't even get the rebels right) and they move on. If accused of sexual violence, it is a horrible news which will certainly make headlines, curses and discussions.
>It is also in our religion that the killing of one person is the killing of all humanity, similarly, violence against one person is equal to violence against all citizens. But in which religion it is written that on the one hand the situation is like the storm Noah, humanity is drowning, people are trying to pull their children out in the falling waters and all the educated people of the country are busy in the discussion that What did Shahbaz Gul eat for breakfast today?
And then when we saw five young men standing on a rock in the flood water, first waiting for a rescuer and then being swept away in the water, we fell on our own politicians to stop politics and help the flood victims.
There is no other political work that can be done with the help of the flood victims, so politicians should be told to do politics in the gym, wear a hat, wear long boots, put on black glasses, take pictures with poor children, on a helicopter. Go round, stand in the ration truck and distribute the ration bags and then take photos from where there were no votes in the last election. Fear lest you suffer.
Give as much taunts as you want to politicians, rulers, but look around, the first to disappear in this doomsday scenario are our Seths and those corporations who only know how to make money from Pakistan.
Where are the companies that take water from our land and sell it to us in bottles, then play some songs and sell drinks year after year?
Where are the sellers of fertilizers that turn the soil into gold, the mobile phone companies that put their hands in the pockets of every poor person and take out the last ten rupees, where are the cotton exporters who advertise millions of rupees every third month and say, ``We have lost''. Gone are the builders of ladle housing societies of every government who have cut plots on the banks of rivers, right in the middle of flood drains.
And where are those ships of Malik Riaz who are ready to ride every ruler, every opposition leader. But when a natural calamity occurs, they are grounded.
If the hearts of these Seths remain so stubborn, one day their kingdoms will collapse in minutes like the Honeymoon Hotel in Swat.
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