The Continual Killing of Physicians
By Dr. Mahjabeen Islam
Toledo , Ohio
What do you do with a nation that’s been killing its physicians for the last ten years? Not in the name of vigilantism and avenging malpractice or the egregious deaths of patients but for insane ideologies that fault a physician for being Shia. Or worse: Ahmadi.
The spectrum of consent is vast: on one end are those that do not know or care and on the other those that actively orchestrate the targeted murders. And the government versus the people ping-pong continues. No photo-ops are sacrificed and the promises are nauseating in their emptiness.
It all began actually twenty-five years ago as extremism ala Zia-ul-Haq permeated the Pakistani psyche. When slowly but surely the Arabisation of Pakistan began. When we found it blasphemous to say Khudahafiz and substituted it with Allah-hafiz. When the colorful and totally modest shalwar-kameez-dupatta combo had to be substituted with the austere, frequently grey or brown, jilbab-hijab-niqab trio. Harassment of Shias and especially Shia physicians had begun, and then, as now, the government had better things to do.
Eighty doctors were murdered in a crescendo of target killing in 2000, and the majority was Shia. Many worked in the underserved and overpopulated areas of Karachi. It seems to me that there may not have been a subsequent reprieve, just an exodus of Shia physicians.
Ahmadi is of course almost an expletive in Pakistan. In the recent past, in the Punjab, Ahmadi physicians have been murdered again in broad daylight. And for all the legal recourse that the return of Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry allegedly brought, no suo motos occurred, no one was apprehended, no trials set.
Pakistan was built on the doctrine of Islam, an ideology that is based most fundamentally on justice. There is something seriously wrong with a society that harasses those that stand for justice. If I protest the killing of Ahmadis then I am labeled as one. And now watch me metamorphose into a Shia.
The second wave of targeted killings is sadly now. There have been days in which six have been killed. A press release of the PMA, Pakistan Medical Association on June 8 th is very telling.
“A meeting was held at PMA House, Karachi, which was attended by CCPO Mr. Waseem Ahmed, Mr. Raja Umer Khattak, SSP Investigation, senior leadership of Pakistan Medical Association, doctors of city, members of Pakistan Medical Association, Karachi, PMA Centre and Pakistan Islamic Medical Association (PIMA). CCPO informed the doctors that the police Department know which groups are involved in the killing and the people behind the killers. He further said that he and his men are going to apprehend them in the next 24hrs. He further committed that if he is unable to protect the lives of the citizens and the doctors he will proudly resign from the post and will go home.
”He elaborated in detail the motives of this target killing and the proliferation of unlicensed arms in the city; mentioning this he said every day more than 10 search arrests are made but due to pressure and ill implementation of specific laws such criminals get free though he assured that despite all this he will deliver positive results soon.
”In his statement, Dr. Idrees Adhi, President PMA is agitated and saddened on the apathy of government officials, he added that there are so many doctors in the government holding important portfolios, for example, Governor Sindh, Interior Minister and Health Minister Sindh but none of them had taken notice of the situation and issued a statement in this regard.”
Now for the Capital City Police Officer Mr. Waseem Ahmed to make brazen statements such as a prior knowledge of the criminals and the inability to apprehend them due to “pressure” baffles the mind and defies response. Considering the continuance of the murders and his lofty promises it seems it is resignation time.
In this meeting to protest the repeated murders of physicians it is to be noted, though euphemistically omitted in the press release, that all of twenty doctors participated. The fear and panic that grips the nation has permeated physician minds and the “discretion is the better part of valor” paranoid copout has taken hold.
Governor Ishratul Ibad and Dr. Farooq Sattar in a meeting with President Zardari appeared appropriately grim. Cocooned in his mansions and Mercedes’ Mr. Zardari smiled and smiled. Is a smile his version of the infamous Pakistani prescription “sub theek ho jaye ga”?
Thirty-year old Dr. Babar Mannan was working in Hussaini Health Home in the Irani Camp locality of Orangi town when two young men barged in and emptied their guns on him. In another recent episode motorbike gunmen intercepted Dr. Haider Abbas near Metroville lll killing him on the spot. In the same wave of madness Dr. Junaid Shakir and Dr. Hasan Haider were killed in New Karachi and Railway Colony respectively.
Sad, and seemingly powerless, physicians on the Dow Medical College alumni list mourn the victims. Dr. Tariq Chundrigar writes poignantly: “A childhood friend of mine used to run a dental clinic in Nazimabad. He shared the clinic with a GP. This tireless, never-out-of -temper gentleman had a following of patients which warmed one’s heart. One day in 1989 someone walked into the GP's clinic, pretending to be a doctor, put a gun to his head, and shot him twice. And calmly walked out, to the waiting motorcycle, and rode off. Closer to home and heart, I am sure you all remember Raza Jafri. A more brilliant mind I have not seen. I spoke to a fellow surgeon and was shocked when he told me that he actually identified Raza's remains on the stretcher in a small private hospital in Gulshan. This was late 2000.”
APPNA, the Association of Physicians of Pakistani Descent of North America, is also busy preparing for its summer extravaganza. No time for condemnations.
The US Constitution guarantees the right to bear arms; Pakistan’s does not. De-weaponization must be immediate, without ifs, ands, buts, smiles and promises. Perhaps the Supreme Court needs to step in, for a government that is as usual ineffective, unwilling and incapable of protecting its citizens.
Pakistan ’s literacy rate is abysmal as it is. And no society is in a position to destroy its greatest asset: intellectual capital.
(Mahjabeen Islam is a columnist, family physician and addictionist with a practice in Toledo Ohio. She can be reached at mahjabeen.islam@gmail.com)
