“In the End, we will
remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends”
Dr. Martin Luther King,
Jr.
14th December
2012 was marked as a great day in the history of peaceful protests. A group of
500 men and women got together on Old Numaish Chowrangi to protest against the
on going Shia Genocide in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. This sit-in protest
(Dharna) was organised by different organisations and backed by over a million
people from all backgrounds, including women and children.
Friday evening also
witnessed forceful closure and gun fire in the city as one of the leading
political party of the city came out to protest against Supreme Court’s verdict
against its founding leader. So our media cam into action by constantly giving coverage
to any incident which happened. From Friday to the unannounced strike by the
same party, every event was given coverage by our media.
At the same time the
peaceful protest was still going on with significant participation by not only
men, but women and children too, of all ages. By the time some analyst visited
the site of the protest, the number of participants had gone up to 50,000.
Despite the ongoing violence in the city and lack of government support for
security, the sit-in protest reached its peak on Saturday evening. This clearly
showed that each participant had lost one of his or her family members,
friends, or acquaintance, due to the ongoing sectarian violence in the city.
From political parties to
people belonging to the media and not to forget our Judges; difference of
opinion regarding violence against minorities is continuously moving our
society inevitably towards a civil war. Our media, political parties like PTI,
PML-N, PPP & MQM can take out rallies for Malala but none of them came
forward when Syeda Mehzar Zehra was critically injured and his father was
killed while going towards school. Imran Khan and media anchors that came out
for Malala were silent on such an incident.
Similarly migration of
Hindu families due to lack of security and incidents like Gojra are not on the agenda
of any of our media groups or political parties. When suicide bombing takes
place, the media and parties like PTI and JI come out and defend it by stating
it as a reaction to drone strikes. Similarly, banned organizations on
Youm-e-Ishq Rasool broke hell out in Karachi and Peshawar by damaging private
property and on the same time were given coverage on media.
A peaceful sit-in protest
of about more than 50000 people, where not a single car was burnt nor was any
property damaged despite the absence of security personnel. Similar protests in
Tunisia and Egypt were given ample coverage by our media but none were present
when the sit-in protest at Numaish against Shia Genocide took place.
In end as I have always stated, today it's Shias in specific and other minorities. A day will come when these animals will come after your family also.
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