Alamdar Road, Quetta (file photo): Shia Hazara protestors with coffins of those killed in a 2012 attack sit in the freezing cold to demand government action. #NeverForget
Another attack at a Shia Imambargah in Peshawar. More loss of innocent lives as the “good” Taliban strike again. The Pakistan military machine goes after the “bad” ones, while those who kill Shias and Ahmadis are allowed to function as they further outdated foreign policy objectives re India / Kashmir and Afghanistan. (see Pakistan Must Discard its ‘Good Taliban, Bad Taliban’ Narrative)
Pakistanis will keep protesting, the perpetrators will keep attacking.
Feb 13, 2015: Civil society protest outside Karachi Press Club against the Peshawar Imambargah attack today. Photo: Waqas Ali Zaheer, Democratic Students Federation
The strength of the civil society activists trying to counter them lies not in protests (though those are important) but in counter-narrative building, legal actions, pushing for rule of law, accountability and so on. That’s why the moves to #ArrestAbdulAziz and #ArrestAurangzebFarooqui – the protest outside Islamabad Lal Masjid after the Peshawar army public school massacre and Sindh Chief Minister house after the Shikarpur Imambargah blast – were so powerful.
The protests continue. Another global vigil is scheduled for Feb 15-16 to mark two months of the Peshawar attack, to push the Pakistan government and security establishment to do what they should be doing anyway: take action against criminal murderers regardless of the motivation. #RuleofLaw
Filed under: Progressive politics | Tagged: Afghanistan, APS attack, civil society, global vigil, good taliban bad taliban, Imambargah attack, India, Pakistan, peshawar, Shia |
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