This week, three
different parts of the world – Pakistan, East Africa and the United States –
have hit the news in ways that have outraged so many including myself. Read
below …
***
FEUDALS BUY THEIR WAY OUT OF MURDER
IN PAKISTAN SO THAT EVERYONE CAN GET ON WITH ENJOYING RICE PUDDING AND CRICKET
What’s the
price of a human life? It’s 10 she-camels, according to pre-Islamic tribal
customs in the Arabian Peninsula. In other words, a murderer could compensate
for a murder with 10 female milk-and-baby-camel-producing camels and be
pardoned for the crime by the victim’s heirs.
Now setting
the exchange rate for a human life in terms of livestock seems primitive and tribal
– but some of the tribes of the Arabian Peninsula weren’t just ragtag nomads.
The Quraysh, for example, were settled, sophisticated urbanites, who ran a
successful and largely peaceful, trading and pilgrimage center in Mecca during
this period.
The core idea
is simple – an eye for an eye will make the world blind (1,400 years before
Gandhi); or that it is better (magnanimous) to forgive and forget than to
avenge. In some cases, the initial murder, the one that sparked it all, can
come under dispute and lead to a perpetual cycle of killing, so some form of
non-human tradability helps put an end to the blood-letting (think “War on
Terror” and who started it first).
Whatever the
real reason, Islam adopted the principal of blood money, under the term “diyat”.
If the perpetrator and the victim settle on a sum, then the one who committed
the crime can be pardoned. And it’s not that Islam opposes the Death Penalty.
It’s just one of several alternatives paths to justice available (and I am no
expert on which form of justice is preferred or recommended under Shariah Law).
In fact, I
oppose the Death Penalty – but my position is driven by some abstract liberal
notion governed by some mental short-cut that I sometimes cannot explain,
especially when faced with a real concrete situation, where anything short of
the Death Penalty seems so blatantly insufficient. One such instance is the
Delhi Bus Gang Rape in India, where the perpetrators where awarded the Death
Penalty just a few days ago. Another such situation arose in December of last
year in Pakistan.
Shahzeb Khan
was an Upper Middle-Class youth living in the city of Karachi. One December
evening he was gunned down in cold blood by the scions of two powerful, land-owning,
feudal families of Pakistan – Shahrukh Jatoi and Siraj Talpur. The causes were petty,
but the crime scene gruesome – the murderers lodged multiple bullets into
Shahzeb and his car, in the parking lot of his building, an act clearly in cold
blood.
The murder
sparked outrage and a successful social media campaign which signed up 200,000
supporters. Police were unable to, at first, arrest the feudals. One of them
even managed to escape to Dubai, under a botched identity, with his passage
through the airport facilitated by public officials. He didn’t even obtain an
Immigration Exit stamp on his passport, as required under Pakistani law.
But the UAE
eventually deported this feudal, and the other one was arrested after an
independent media and judiciary placed immense pressure on the law enforcement
agencies (some of the most corrupt and politically manipulated institutions in
Pakistan).
Finally, the
two murderers were brought to trial. There was all kinds of drama – what should
have taken a week (under Pakistani Anti-Terrorism Law) dragged on for four
months. Witnesses were intimidated. The feudal kids who are 19, claimed that
they were juveniles at 17, and so had to be medically examined. The doctors
issued conflicting reports.
Ultimately,
the trial concluded in June of this year, and the two main culprits were
awarded the Death Penalty, with their two accomplices awarded life
imprisonment. For once, Pakistan had proven that no one, not even the kids of
two powerful feudal families, are above the law. But our celebration was short-lived,
and we recently hit new depths of despondency.
Earlier this
week, news broke out that the victim’s family has settled the murder for 350
million rupees in blood money (approx. US$ 3.5 million). A good camel costs
around 100,000 rupees, so the settlement happened for 3,500 camels equivalent as
opposed to just 10. And it’s not even fully clear whether or not money is
involved, so let’s set aside direct greed and material convenience, as
considerations in this whole saga.
What is
important to understand here is that the family and the witnesses who were
instrumental in the prosecution of the feudals have a social obligation to
uphold justice, and fight for it until and even after it has been delivered.
This is easy for me to say from the sidelines, but I am not just saying it
because it helps me score moral credentials without any skin in the game. This
is no longer just a private matter that can simply be settled out of court. It impacts
everyone when a feudal can simply gun down anyone they wish to, with the
understanding that they can buy their way out of it afterwards.
I spent 40
minutes last night listening to an interview with the victim’s parents, trying
to understand where they might be coming from. Because even though this is a
social issue now, their loss has been the greatest and their views must be
sought out and understood in a respectful manner. But I came out with much less
respect for them than I had when I went in.
Their first
argument is that the sentence will probably never be carried out, so they might
as well settle. This is an incorrect assumption – even fatalistic. The civil
society and the media are behind them, and will ensure that the sentence is
delivered. Why have they jumped to such a conclusion?
Their second
line of reasoning is that they are doing this, not for themselves, but for all
the witnesses and supporters of the victim – more specifically they want their
lives to be normalized, and do not wish to place additional burden on them.
This is a combination of not wanting to owe and not wanting to make them, the
witnesses and supporters, feel that they owe anything.
While this
second argument is somewhat abstract, underlying it are two premises. The first
one is that the feudals can continue to harass them, and make life difficult
for them, unless they settle amicably – this may not be far from the truth,
unfortunately in a country like Pakistan. Justice and truth is not going to come
without cost here.
The second premise
is that the victim’s family, and its supporters seek a “normal” material life
over and above justice for Shahzeb and all of Pakistan, with the potential
price of justice being the harassment from the feudals. This assumes that they
value their material conveniences over and above their ideals. This again is
quite possibly a false assumption and I will come back to this at the end.
Their third
and final set of arguments is faith based – the first sub-argument being that
God likes those who forgive. So they will score “sawaab” or brownie points for
their magnanimity, which in a purely rational, self-interested, value
maximizing world, is in fact the right thing for them to do. But not only does
it smack of quasi-material self-interest, but conveniently ignores the longer-term
social cost of not standing up against the “zalim” or aggressor.
They
continued their faith based argument by postulating that God will bring these
individuals to justice on The Day of Judgment, anyway, so why not be patient
until then? But if all we’re doing is waiting for the Day of Judgment, then we
might as well give up right here, right now, and take a back seat in everything until the real show begins.
Unfortunate
as it was, the day this incident took place, the lives of those involved
changed forever. Now they must stand-up, above and beyond themselves, for all
of society, and help ensure that nothing like this happens ever again. The
alternative is to settle so that they can enjoy a “normal” life eating rice
pudding and watching cricket. I cannot force them one way or another – but they
do hold the burden of the choice which will impact us all.
***
EAST AFRICAN LEADERS FAIL THEIR
STATES IN BLATANT ACTS OF DEGENERACY
The two
highest public office holders in a certain East African country, namely Kenya
(also known as Silicon Savannah and hailed as an example of leap-frogging, and home-grown
solutions to development like M-PESA), have been accused of crimes against
humanity, and summoned to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The
Hague. They have been accused of organizing criminal gangs and death squads to intimidate
rivals following the disputed 2007 elections in Kenya, which were clearly
rigged. In fact, they were so blatantly rigged, that the individuals who rigged
them didn’t even bother to cover their tracks properly.
What ensued
left 1,200 dead and over half a million homeless. Kenya, a regional African
hub, and darling of the west, for its relative stability and supportive role in
the War against Terror, jumped from 34th rank in the Failed States
Index to 16th in just a year. No one had recognized or taken
seriously, the tensions that were simmering underneath a seemingly calm facade.
Kofi Annan,
the Nobel Peace Prize winner, and former UN Secretary General, mediated a
solution to the conflict, which among many things, included a new constitution
for Kenya, and demanded that those responsible for the crimes be brought to
justice. But even two years after the mediation succeeded in bringing back peace,
Kenya failed to provide any traction towards justice for the victims, amid
political wrangling, and general malaise and dysfunction across the public
institutions within the country.
Kofi Annan
was left with no choice but to hand the cases over to the ICC Prosecutor Luis
Moreno Ocampo in 2009, so that proceedings against those accused could take
place in The Hague under international institutions, and justice could be
dispensed. He recently wrote an article on this in the New York Times:
The accused were
not in power at the time that the cases were initiated, but were elected into
office in the recent elections of 2013 – again these elections were mired by
irregularities. It’s not even a question of voters not being able to select the
right candidates (anyone with even so much as a blemish, let alone accusations
of Crimes Against Humanity, ought to be rejected), but of the voting process
being high jacked for the second time in a row. But this time no one spoke out
too loudly for the sake of peace and stability. Everyone’s trying to ensure
that the symptoms don’t aggravate, without addressing the root causes.
But even as
they stepped into public office, they decided to comply with the court – in
fact, they are the first serving public officials ever to comply with the
court. Sudan’s President, Omar Al-Bashir, has repeatedly shown the court the
finger.
But this was
only to last until this week when the Kenyan Parliament decided to exit the
Rome Statutes which created the International Criminal Court – in effect, it
has finally decided to show the ICC the finger. Here’s an article by the
spokesperson for the political party of the two accused individuals:
The
arguments include words like neo-colonialism, sovereignty, race-hunting and chasing-Africa
– it’s dirty old political rhetoric, and it is so clear that these individuals are
absolutely devoid of any integrity. And most of this political non-sense
actually does not sell, but what is frustrating is that Kenyan’s have become so
apathetic, that they do not even seem to care. This could be their downfall.
So forget
M-PESA or toilets which turn human waste into energy. As long as the ruling
political elite remains entrenched, taking “turns to eat” (one must read the
book, “It’s our Turn to Eat”, by Michela Wrong, which documents anti-corruption
efforts by one whistle-blower in Kenya), with no one willing to stand-up for
what is right, Kenya risks becoming a Failed State.
***
BIGOTRY LIVES LARGE IN AMERICA, BUT
IT’S ALL TOO CONVENIENT TO DOWNPLAY IT OR ASSUME IT AWAY
The recently
crowned Miss America is of foreign or more specifically Indian origin (oriental
or Eastern Indian, not native American Indian). Nina Davuluri was crowned Miss
New York, before being crowned Miss America. It’s a triumph for a country whose
greatness is built upon attracting and integrating generation after generation
of top quality immigrants from all over the world. And it turns out that one of
these immigrants is quite pretty too.
But
following this news, Twitter exploded with racist and ignorant tweets, some of
which have been retweeted thousands of times. I won’t detail these out myself –
you can see for yourself here:
And here:
Initially it
was about being Muslim, Arab or Al-Qaeda. Then they found out her actual ethnicity,
but were still racist. The 7-Eleven and Gas Station jokes started. See them here:
Then I found
other Tweets on 9/11, here:
As I shared
these with American friends, I heard two types of defensive responses.
1. Don’t pay
attention to anything on Twitter
2. There are
bigots in every country
Ultimately, America
needs to recognize that it does not always live up to the ideals that it espouses
and strives towards. Everything from drones to Guantanamo, to these bigots are
alive and well in America. Large segments of the education system have utterly failed
to create knowledge of and respect for anything outside of America. These
things are inexcusable in a country with such a self-perception of greatness.
And it’s all
too convenient for Caucasian upwardly mobile urban professionals to assume
these issues away or downplay them. But not only does it fail to solve pressing
problems, but they do not even recognize that these issues are real because
they are not directly impacted by any of them – it’s ultimately individuals
like myself who are sent to the side room in SFO every time we have to clear US
Customs and Border Protection.
If you can,
I recommend watching a new film, “The Reluctant Fundamentalist”. It’s pretty
good cinema, and will help bridge these two worlds.
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