Pity the Nation That Does Not Respond to the Misery of Fellow Countrymen

Long march­es are not a new phe­nom­e­non. Many lead­ers, from all over the world, have embarked on long march­es pri­mar­i­ly for polit­i­cal motives. The most prime exam­ple is of Mao Tse-tung who along with sol­diers and par­ty cadres cov­ered a dis­tance of more than 9000 kilo­me­ters. Such efforts not only cement­ed his posi­tion as the leader but, also paved the way for com­mu­nist regime in Chi­na. Anoth­er exam­ple is of Gand­hi who famous­ly walked for 390 km on foot as part of his Salt March.

Fur­ther­more, in our coun­try many lead­ers have orga­nized long march­es to achieve their objec­tives. Dur­ing the last few years, two sig­nif­i­cant long march­es took place. One was for judiciary’s restora­tion and the oth­er was for the ref­or­ma­tion of the gov­er­nance sys­tem. For­mer was suc­cess­ful while the lat­ter was a fail­ure but, notably, Pak­istani media cov­ered them vehe­ment­ly. It seems quite dif­fi­cult to com­pre­hend the main rea­sons which attract max­i­mum media cov­er­age. Is it the SUV(s) and motorcade(s) which they are eager to show on their chan­nels? Is it the num­ber of par­tic­i­pants? Is it the dis­play of wealth and pow­er? Or, is it the self-serv­ing poli­cies of var­i­ous media hous­es? It is more of a conun­drum for me but let me attempt to make sense of it.

In my per­son­al opin­ion, glit­ter­ing wealth and deceit­ful pow­er are nec­es­sary ele­ments to get media attrac­tion because present­ly a hand­ful of peo­ple (includ­ing women and chil­dren) from Balochis­tan led by Mama Qadeer Baloch, a 72 year old man, are on their way to Islam­abad to seek jus­tice for miss­ing per­sons but media rarely reports about them. The head­lines hun­gry media which has report­ed on Veena Malik’s piety, Meera’s silli­ness and things such as falling of a boy in a man­hole as break­ing news, has turned a blind eye to the cause of Baloch peo­ple. Per­haps because they are cov­er­ing thou­sands of miles — from Quet­ta to Islam­abad — on foot instead of SUVs and they do not have wealth and pow­er to dis­play lav­ish­ly. They are on foot, non­vi­o­lent, poor and an epit­o­me of mis­ery. Sure­ly, they do not have any attrac­tive ele­ment to draw some lime­light on them­selves.

All blame can­not be put on the media because there is anoth­er enti­ty which is the most pow­er­ful and respon­si­ble i.e. the state. In inter­na­tion­al rela­tions, state can be defined as: a legal/political enti­ty that is com­prised of the fol­low­ing: a) a per­ma­nent pop­u­la­tion; b) a defined ter­ri­to­ry; c) a gov­ern­ment; and d) the capac­i­ty to enter into rela­tions with oth­er states. For­tu­nate­ly, our moth­er­land per­fect­ly meets with each cri­te­ri­on which is need­ed to be rec­og­nized as a sov­er­eign state. Since, it is imper­a­tive for a state to estab­lish its author­i­ty and exer­cise the rule of law in order to gov­ern; it becomes oblig­a­tory to deal with sedi­tion against the gov­ern­ing bod­ies.

Like­wise the state has con­duct­ed many mil­i­tary oper­a­tions against the per­ceived threat of Baloch sep­a­ratists. Mil­i­tary oper­a­tions may result in a short term dis­sua­sion of crit­i­cal sit­u­a­tions but in the long run it leads to fur­ther prob­lems. The issue of sep­a­ratism must be pos­i­tive­ly addressed by giv­ing equal rights, provin­cial auton­o­my and by devel­op­ing the affect­ed peo­ple and areas.
Ear­li­er, US Con­gress­man Dana Rohrabach­er had tabled a res­o­lu­tion in the US House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives for the recog­ni­tion of Baloch right to self-deter­mi­na­tion. It should be not­ed that the glob­al human rights regime has now become very pow­er­ful, and in many ways has also tran­scend­ed state’s author­i­ty. There­fore, human rights vio­la­tion is a major excuse for inter­ven­tion by anoth­er state on human­i­tar­i­an grounds.

It is high time that gov­ern­ment should dis­pense jus­tice and ful­fill the right­ful demands of Baloch peo­ple under the con­sti­tu­tion of Pak­istan. If the gov­ern­ment can enter into talks with bar­bar­ic TTP, who not only mur­dered thou­sands of peo­ple but have also defamed our coun­try as well as our reli­gion, then why can­not it nego­ti­ate with the Baloch peo­ple?

The daunt­ing real­i­ty of our nation becom­ing unscrupu­lous and indif­fer­ent towards the mis­eries of oth­ers is appalling and press­ing. What makes the afore­men­tioned exam­ples of Mao and Gand­hi prodi­gious is the over­whelm­ing sup­port they both received from pub­lic. That is why Gandhi’s Salt March is still remem­bered and often talked about event from the past despite the fact that he had only cov­ered 390 km, while Mama Qadeer with his group has trav­elled more than 2,000 km until now. Shame­ful­ly peo­ple are not pay­ing any heed to these activists, except few who show up to express sol­i­dar­i­ty. Some politi­cians also show up for pho­tograph­ing and then fade away just like their emp­ty promis­es. I am afraid that the names of these coura­geous and unde­terred Baloch activists would soon be for­got­ten. Last­ly, pity the nation that does not respond to the mis­ery of fel­low coun­try­men.