Dear Friends,
I do not like to bring you bad news but I can no longer hold back the simple truth. Crimes of the worst kind being committed in the area and the unchecked growth of these are no longer news. But the subject is not just gossip or grist to apathy either. I have not touched on this subject much during our past conversations, although this matter concerns me as much as it should every member of the society. It is time to disavow the lack of information (or pretended ignorance) and burying our heads in the sand.
It is immediate; and it is too close for comfort. If something proper is not done about it, we don’t know who will be spared — and what, if anything at all worthwhile, will be left here for the future. In fact (and this may be news), yours truly’s family has been the target of much harm done during the past four-and-a-half years. Functionaries of various types (including government functionaries) have been carrying out their underhand business in this nefarious design. We have also been given a death threat. All this, for reasons unknown to us — and kept from us despite our repeated requests and reminders.
One likely cause for all the harassment and material harm done to us as a family is a fault that, I would readily admit, I share in common with my siblings and our respective children: we are law-abiding citizens. We are not trendy enough to approve or partake of the widespread criminality around us, do not acquiesce in a wrongful act, and refuse the benefit of unlawful gains.
We, like many others remaining, are ordinary, responsible citizens and professionals who practise their precepts and have tried to inculcate the same among the thousands whom we have taught and mentored through decades of dedicated work. Evidently, such practice — what used to be normality in responsible citizenship, services, and professions — is not acceptable to the hydra-headed mafias that have massively infiltrated the state structure and are now seriously engaged in taking control of every branch of life. As such, there cannot be a single yardstick as a measure of performance and conduct, when duplicity is the “new normal” and double-dealing is the name of the game. The net result of the entire process, in spite of the recent parliamentary and judicial efforts, is a severe limitation in real life of civil liberties, compromising both life and liberty — not to speak of the quality of life affected in the entire region.
Among the latest examples of savagery that we must deal with is the following episode of the struggle for unmolested existence. Some people in official uniforms made an abduction attempt on me on Friday, 23 November, around 4:00 pm in G-11 Markaz (market), Islamabad, where I had gone to buy something. They manhandled me and tried to push me inside a vehicle to take me away. Over one hundred people had gathered on the scene in the meantime and prevented the perpetrators from carrying out their evil plans. I managed to reach home finally and formally reported the matter to the area police, which has yet to register the FIR.
I write now to save everyone a lateral complaint, or overhearing in any sort of afterlife granted one: “But he did not inform us in time…”.
Although I do not know what personal safety in the area means when/if you are living as an ordinary citizen here, yet I wish you all a safe and peaceful life wherever you are.
PROFESSOR ALAMGIR HASHMI
Islamabad
A letter to friends and fellow citizens
