ON February 1, just after the return to the beloved homeland of our two world travelers, President from the East, Prime Minister from the West, the national press carried two stories, both highly shaming to this republic and its leadership.

On the morning of January 27 in the village of Habib Labano, Ubauro, near Gotkhi in Sindh (some 500 km from Karachi), reportedly and allegedly, a 16-year old girl, Nasima, was grabbed by a group of 11 men, taken away and gang-raped and then forced to walk back to her home, through the village streets, in a state of semi-nudity. The story spread, as all such stories do after the Mukhtaran Mai incident, and was picked up by a foreign news agency. Various human rights associations have been alerted and certain NGOs have approached the Supreme Court requesting the judges to take suo motu notice of this incident. It was reported on the front page of two publications of our national press on February 1.

In one publication, bang next to this front-paged story headlined ‘Girls raped, paraded naked in Ubauro,’ was another headline ‘Lovers stoned to death in Multan village.”

On January 28, a woman of Donga Bonga, Ellahi Hussain, was accused by her family of having an affair with a man, Hafeez Shah, from the same village. Her murder was planned by her relatives. The man and woman were dragged out of a house by a gang bent on vengeance, ropes were bound around their necks and they were tied to a couple of trees. They were stoned to death by a bloodthirsty mob which “smashed their heads with stones and bricks.” This act of sheer barbarism, which took place in the ruling province of enlightened Punjab, near the great and ancient city of Multan, has also no doubt been picked up by foreign news agencies.

We, the nation, are fully deserving of whatever international odium and contempt is stirred by these two disgraceful and truly shaming acts. There are laws galore on the statute book which provide for speedy arrests of all the culprits concerned who should be put on trial for murder, plain and simple murder in the first degree, and awarded with as little delay as is legally possible the ultimate punishment for their crimes.

But this will not happen. The question of ‘honour’ killings will arise, the jirga system will be brought into play, old feudal traditions and customs will be evoked and it is quite possible that these cold-blooded murderers amidst us will go free – as so many have done before.

We then come to the question of the great triumph of last year, the passage through parliament of what is erroneously known as the Women’s Protection Bill and its subsequent transition into law. Where did this law come into play in Ubauro and Donga Bonga? How did it protect Nasima and Ellahi? How will it protect hundreds, maybe thousands, of other young girls and women who will succumb to the mores of the Pakistani jungle and to the national mindset present in the vast majority of the illiterate, poverty-stricken 160-plus millions of this land and the few thousand wicked feudals who keep them firmly where they are?

Yesterday, Dawn carried a story datelined Gujranwala, February 2, relating how “students torture to death bus checker.” A bus on its way from Lahore to Gujrat was halted when the GT road was blocked by students (of what?). They “forcibly boarded the bus” and when the ticket cheeker asked them for their tickets they beat him to death. Charming.

A far more gory tale was also carried yesterday by another daily publication under the headline a “28-year old was castrated with a broken tea cup.” Huzoor Baksh Malik of Larkana who was about to be married – he “was awarded a girl by a jirga in compensation for his mother’s murder ten years ago.” That in itself is grossly wrong. On January 21, his employer, one Tonio, accused him of theft and he was handed over to the police and locked up. On January 24 Tonio and some friends arrived at the police station, asked Malik to admit to his crime, and when he refused they “castrated him with a broken tea cup.” What comment can possibly be made?

Back to the nation’s physical health (having dealt with just the tip of its mental aberrations) on which I wrote two weeks ago quoting from a report authored by Dr Jamsheer Talati who has yet to be contacted by our ‘proactive’ health minister who has more important matters on which to focus than the nation’s health problems.

Why he was appointed health minister is anyone’s guess as he is obviously incapable of advising or guiding his boss, Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz, when it comes to matters of health. On January 24 a news item in this newspaper informed us that Mr Aziz, indulging in one of his favourite pastimes, performed the “groundbreaking ceremony” of a “Rs.2 billion medical complex for the elite,” in Islamabad, the “first of two elitist medical towers” (14-storey) to be built. The second one (13-storey) is destined to go up and up on the premises of Karachi’s Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre at a cost of Rs.3.4 billion. This is a gross and criminal misplacement of priorities and someone should have so advised the prime minister.

With the divide between the haves and have-nots growing wider by the day, such hare-brained schemes are not what the nation needs. Karachi has to its credit a couple of newly developed and tested models of public private partnerships, conceived and built for the people, poor and rich, without wasting public or private money. Both are situated in the JPMC, and the motivating force behind them was Professor Dr Hasan Aziz.

The Accident and Emergency Foundation (cost Rs.30 million – various philanthropists of Karachi) is equipped with two operation theatre suites with state of the art stand alone facilities. It has its own medical supplies, instruments, equipment, round-the-clock theatre managers, and outsourcing security, sanitation and civil works maintenance. It has been in commission for almost three years during which 5,000 emergency surgeries have been performed without one single patient being charged one single rupee. Because of its excellence, it is often the chosen venue for visiting surgical specialists to hold special skills workshops and teleworkshops. Donations continue to flow in from private sources without having to hold a mass of fund-raising functions.

Then there are the model labour rooms and gynae-surgical theatres, planned by a group of health workers and concerned laypeople, and adopted by the Marium Ali Mohammad Tabba Foundation which runs and manages the complex entirely from Tabba family funds. The complex is contained in a two-storey building, a state of the art facility with all equipment required for obstetric care plus five operation theatres for surgical cases. The complex can deal with over 12,000 deliveries per year and with over 6,000 surgical patients per year.

The Tabba Foundation provides maintenance, medication, repairs and replacement of equipment and all machinery, and it provides the management to run the complex.

Suggestion : Next time the prime minister visits Karachi, he should take a break from his run of the mill inaugurations and foundation stone laying ceremonies, and with the two monstrous ‘elitist’ medical towers in mind, pay a visit to the JPMC and see for himself what can be done for the people, the awam so beloved of our politicians, at a reasonable cost when the private and public sectors cooperate meaningfully, practically and with good intent. He can always bring along the health minister in tow.

e-mail: arfc@cyber.net.pk