Sabeen Mehmud's Murder

Sabeen Mehmud’s Murder

Sitting at dinner I heard T2F’s owner Sabeen Mehmud has been gunned down in Karachi after hosting a discussion on #UnsilencingBaluchistan; Sabeen had offered to host the Talk which had been recently banned at LUMS. A talk. A discussion. & She was killed.

Shocked and unsurprised many of us carried on. Naturally the remainder of the evening went by uncomfortably but carried on we did.

Several missed calls from my sister, Sabeen’s fellow mate at Kinnaird, this skin crawling feeling grew. I couldn’t sleep that night, thinking this could be me, this could so many one knows, where am I living? I cannot recognize this land I live in. This is my home. What is going on? & I do not think only so called ‘liberals’ or ‘secular’ or ‘progressives’ were the only ones thinking this that night.

Reading Moeed Pirzada’s tweet sometime that same evening, just increased the skin crawling feeling further, blame anyone but ourselves, it’s the Fucking Indians again! How could it be anyone else?   Doesn’t end, Ahmed Qureshi apparently on a vilification campaign against anything rational is also on a rampage against DR. Taimur Rehman blaming him for Sabeen’s death. How does one blame a human rights activist for a crime a gunman committed on behalf of those who do not want open discussion on ‘sensitive issues’ publicly? I would love to understand that point of view. Actually, I lie; I do not want to understand this point of view. I want to scream.

At the Islamabad literature festival another half whit tried to raise the issue of what is the State doing about the vilification campaign against our security forces? Imagine. Sabeen hasn’t been buried, it isn’t even 12 hours since her brutal murder and you have citizens in this country asking, what is being done to protect an intelligence agency. Normal? Or Sick? The Instinct to protect an institution but not a human being; a dead human being now; but not dead enough clearly?

Today, Mosharraf Zaidi’s piece also tries to shift the blame from the obvious perpetrators of this heinous crime against humanity. So many defend the indefensible. Ethics. What does that mean now? I’m sure someone will come up with a theory.

What does it take to sell your soul?

 I don’t know what makes relatively educated folks turn away from the belief that  unequivocally  it is the unalienable right of every human being equally  To believe in anything To say anything without harm. People always over a ‘nation’ or an ‘institution’. People 1st Breathing beating hearts people. Always. It bothers me. It does. Always has. And I hope always will.