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WHAT’S a human life worth? To loved ones, it is obviously priceless. But to society and the state, the value of a life is clearly relative.
Soon after 9/11, I.A. Rehman, that tireless crusader for human rights, was at my flat in Karachi when my son Shakir asked him why the Americans made such a big fuss over victims of terrorism when so many were killed by jihadis in our part of the world.
I still remember Rehman Sahib’s wise response: “A human life is worth the value a society places on it. In Pakistan, many die unnecessarily, and we don’t much care. But in many countries, human life is cherished, and it is a fundamental duty of the state to protect it.”
In Pakistan, Shia Hazaras have been slaughtered by Sunni extremists in their hundreds, but the response of the state has been minimal. Society sheds a few crocodile tears after each atrocity, and then moves on. It took the massacre of children at the Army Public School in Peshawar two years ago to finally wake up the government and our security forces.
Clearly, the fact that most of the victims were the children of serving and retired officers played a part in providing the trigger to the ongoing army campaign. So one Hazara child is not equal in value to a military officer’s kid, at least in the eyes of the state and society.
We are all selective in our sympathies.
This callous calculation of the value of human life is not exclusive to us: Saudi Arabia is indifferent to the thousands of innocent lives it has snuffed out in Yemen through its brutal and incompetent air campaign. And yet at international forums, its diplomats rail against the excesses of the Syrian regime. So presumably, Yemeni lives are worth far less than the lives of the extremist killers supported by the Saudis.
Then consider our indifference towards the plight of Myanmar’s Muslim Rohingyas. Thousands have been displaced, hundreds killed and the entire community subjected to the most vile ethnic cleansing. And yet, hardly a word of condemnation for Myanmar’s government, or any aid or sympathy for the beleaguered Muslims.
Even that champion of democracy and Nobel Peace Prize winner, Aung Sang Suu Kyi, has not uttered a word in defence of the Rohingyas. It would seem that she shares the widespread prejudice against these unfortunate people; also, she doesn’t want to lose her standing with her country’s majority Buddhists.
Muslims like to think they are part of a larger Islamic nation that spans continents. In this view of the ummah, the brotherhood of Islam reacts to the suffering of all its members from Indonesia to Tunis. And in fact, we angrily condemn the repression of Palestinians at the hands of the Israelis. Islamophobic attacks in New York unite Muslims in their virulent denunciation.
And yet the plight of Rohingyas and Yemenis leaves most of us cold. Ditto the killing fields of Syria. The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, the pan-Islamic body that has always been a Saudi puppet, has little to say about these ongoing atrocities.
Bill, an American reader whose curiosity is matched only by his capacity for research, asked me recently about our Ahmadi community. I had to tell him about our shameful treatment of this persecuted minority. Bill then asked: “If Pakistanis treat their minorities so badly, why do they complain of Islamophobia in the West?” Would anybody care to answer Bill?
It’s true that we are all selective in our sympathies: after all, people far removed from us hardly engage our emotions the way our family members and friends do. So an earthquake in Pakistan would naturally evoke a more immediate response than a natural calamity in, say, Haiti.
With 24/7 news and televised images from around the world flooding into our living rooms, we subconsciously choose which particular tragedy to engage with. Or perhaps because of this constant bombardment of dire news, we erect a mental barrier to block out fresh disasters.
I was watching the BBC news in Sri Lanka when a news flash appeared about the recent PIA plane crash. Immediately, I scoured the internet for more information, going through technical data about the aircraft as well as reading the passenger list. I doubt if I would have reacted similarly had a plane gone down in, say, Chile.
And yet our humanity should be able to feel the pain of others, no matter how far away they live, or whatever their religion or ethnicity. Perhaps the human brain is wired to protect our emotional centre from being overwhelmed by excessive grief.
But what is true for the individual does not hold true for the state. All citizens ought to be equal under the law, and be afforded similar protection. The reality is very different. Here, the rich and the well-connected are above the law, while the Hazaras, Ahmadis, Hindus and Christians are not protected.
Published in Dawn December 10th, 2016
