Who ordered the firing, then?
The CM was completely out of the loop, and only came to know of the Model Town incident through TV news. And he ordered the police to fall back, not open fire. The law minister had ordered the barricades to be removed alright, but then went to bed and, like his boss, only got to know of the clash through news channels. And he definitely did not, according to his statement, order the firing. The police, of course, was well aware of what was happening, but they did not open fire on their own, the order came from somewhere high-up. And here’s perhaps the best part of the tribunal holding the inquiry. The judge, for some reason, made clear that the reason of the exercise was not to fix responsibility but only to get to know the truth.
Yet someone did give the order to fire on defenceless civilians. At least 15 people were killed, and approximately a hundred wounded. And whatever the purpose of this particular inquiry, responsibility must be fixed and appropriate punishment must be handed out.
It is shameful that it took a tragedy of such scale to expose the breakdown and unaccountability within the structures of the Punjab government. How hard can it really be to investigate where the order came from? And whether or not the police followed orders or acted on their own, their way or working, behaviour, and outright brutality have been exposed like seldom before, and someone in charge must do something about it. For starters, they must make an example of the SP, supposedly charged with protecting citizens and the state, openly hugging and congratulating the villain Gullu Butt in front of TV cameras.
It is simply not possible that Shahbaz didn’t know, and Sana didn’t know, and the police didn’t do it on their own. From somewhere in this chain of command came an order to murder innocent civilians. And by the look of things, efforts are being made to cover it up. The state itself is at test.