THE three recent occurrences that greatly shocked the people – the flogging of a young girl in Swat, the killing of three Baloch leaders and the death of a hari protester in Karachi – were manifestations of the state’s derailment.

Unfortunately, the official response betrayed a keenness to shun responsibility and ignore the underlying issues.The video clip of a 17-year-old girl being flogged graphically depicted the horror to which the people of Swat have been condemned for months. The entire population was outraged. The perpetrators of the gruesome atrocity did not deny anything; they only regretted the absence of a qazi on call because that helped the victim escape being stoned to death. Then an utterly bewildering game of denial was played with such gusto that the question of justice was completely abandoned.

The Frontier government’s spokespersons were only interested in showing that the incident had occurred before the so-called peace deal was signed. There was no cause to question the Faustian bargain.

Soon afterwards the knights of reaction started defending the inhuman deed. They denied that what people had seen had happened at all. The whole affair was a conspiracy by some NGOs to sabotage the peace accord. Once again we received confirmation of the adage that denial is the only refuge for anyone who cannot defend his actions. But how much of the Swat militants’ bestiality will anyone deny? Can the grisly ritual of beheading be denied? Many people say videos of brutal acts are being circulated with a view to scaring the people into submission.

The Swat girl’s ordeal was the result of the state’s waywardness for decades, its policy of appeasing the orthodoxy and its failure to appreciate the aspirations of its various communities for autonomy and a justice system they could trust. Instead of dealing with this accumulated task the government is compounding its follies by transforming a bargain-under-duress into a virtue ordained by parliament – a vain pursuit of the theory that crime can be justified if the number of its perpetrators can be inflated. History’s verdict on the National Assembly’s resolution of April 13, 2009 is unlikely to be kind.

The denial game in response to the killing of three Baloch leaders is an even more audacious undertaking. The defenders of the Swat incident slated the publicity given to it, the killers of the Baloch trio wanted their foul deed to be fully publicised. In the Swat incident state functionaries were guilty of covering up for their surrogates, in the Baloch affair they headed the roster of suspects. Thus, denial had to be accompanied with the identification of some other suspects. Now it is claimed that three Baloch could have been killed by their personal enemies or they were caught in Indian plans to stoke trouble in Balochistan.

The assumption underlying this errant nonsense is that the government cannot be held responsible for murder if suspicion can be diverted to hands outside its fold. It is necessary to affirm that whoever might have abducted the three Baloch leaders and whoever might have brutally liquidated them, the government’s failure to guarantee the citizens security of life is too glaring to be forgiven.

The government should not underestimate the factors that persuade the citizens to suspect it of foul play in cases shrouded in mystery. For decades the Pakistan police have been notorious for holding people without charge or record and also for ‘police encounters’. Nobody can deny the existence of the so-called safe houses. The spate of involuntary disappearances and stories of Pakistani citizens’ surrender to foreign authorities have made the state agencies one of the prime suspects, if not the prime suspect, whenever a politician, especially a dissident, goes missing or comes to harm. That demands greater earnestness and efficiency than usual in solving the mystery. Failure in this matter, or even a long delay, will aggravate anti-government feelings.

However, the danger in treating the extermination of the Baloch leaders as a routine crime or a law and order matter should be clear to anyone. A deep wound has been cut into the lacerated body of the Baloch. The Baloch people cannot but see the latest affront to them in the context of the injustices, exploitation and discrimination that has been their lot for three-score years. There are many who believe the Baloch have already been pushed to the point of no return while some still entertain hopes of regaining their confidence. The federal government will have to do much more than has been evident so far if the latter view is to be vindicated.

Like the cases of the Swat girl and the Baloch leaders, the death of an old Sanghar hari who had been on hunger strike for nearly three weeks has come as a reminder of the state’s neglect of the rights of the tillers of the land and its failure to evolve a civilised response to the people’s right to protest.

The government’s negligence is manifest on several counts. First, the Sindh Tenancy Act has never been honestly enforced; the tenants cannot avail of its protection because their names are rarely entered in the records and a hereditary tenant can be treated as a tenant-at-will or even as a field worker (free or bonded). Secondly, all efforts to reform the law and provide for proper documentation and account-keeping of owner-tenant relationships have been spurned.

Thirdly, the government is impervious to the tenants’ vulnerability as a result of the compulsion to live in shabby huts on the landlords’ lands. Even the proposal to settle homeless haris in new villages has been gathering dust for years. Fourthly, the plight of haris belonging to the scheduled castes, who can easily be driven off the land by armed goons or ‘qabza groups’ or auctioned as slaves, remains unheeded. Fifthly, in the allotment of state land on lease or otherwise the haris have no share. And, finally, any attempt to break the wadera-police nexus is termed subversive of Sindh’s interest.

While the lapses briefly mentioned here demand a major effort to carry out land reform, evolve a fair land utilisation policy, free the hari of bondage to the landlord, and end the reign of waderashahi, the task of enforcing a decent code for protest management can be accomplished through a policy document.

Every citizen has a right to protest against whatever he considers unjust, wrong or oppressive. The authorities have no right to interfere so long as a breach of peace is not imminent. Whenever a protest is launched, especially if it includes a demonstration or sit-in at a place for a long period, the officials have a duty to find out the grounds of protest and report to the authorities concerned. If there is a threat to life – through self-inflicted wounds, self-immolation, suicide bid in any other form, or the possibility of death in the event of an extended hunger strike – the administration must monitor the situation and intervene to save lives.

Taken together these three cases offer a message of fundamental importance – that governance devoid of respect for human life and dignity cannot be anything other than tyranny.