Daughter of the east by benazir bhutto
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Leaving Sanghar, army trucks suddenly cut off the car from the front and the rear. We were escorted to the house we were to stay in for the night at bayonet point. ’You are not to continue your trip,’ the District Magistrate told us. ’Where are your orders?’ I asked him. ’I want to see it in writing.’ He had none. ’The regime has just sent him to frighten us,’ said Makhdoom Khaliq, a PPP leader travelling with us. ’Let’s go on.’ The next day we set out for Nawabshah where the meeting was to be the biggest of all. But as the car reached the Khairpur-Nawabshah border we found the road blocked by security forces. This time they came with papers. I was externed from Nawabshah to Karachi on February 18 and forbid-den to leave the city. Once again I missed my fortnightly meeting with my father.
Three criminals, not political prisoners, were sentenced in early March to be hanged in public in Lahore. Hanged in public! The newspapers gave the news wide coverage, as did the television. The hangings were to take place on public ground and they were being advertised like the opening of a play. 200,000 people showed up to watch the gruesome spectacle, the men dangling from the gallows wearing black hoods. I realise now that the regime was psychologically preparing the country for a death sentence for my father. But then I just took it as an extremely ominous sign. All I could remember was the campaign promise of Asghar Khan during the election campaign just a year before: ’Shall I hang Bhutto from the Attock bridge or from a lamp-post?’ The momentum was building towards the court decision. Soldiers in plain clothes were deployed at all government buildings and banks. Ar- moured cars full of soldiers began to patrol Rawalpindi. In Sindh, trucks with machine guns mounted on them rolled through the streets. And a massive round-up began of PPP members, guilty of nothing but the government’s anticipation that they might make trouble when my father’s sentence was announced. The charge read: ’Since you, (fill in the name), are likely to incite trouble on the announcement of verdict in Bhutto’s trial you are hereby detained ....’ How did the regime know what the verdict would be if the courts were independent and the trial fair as Zia claimed? 80,000 arrested from the Punjab, 30,000 from the Frontier Province, 60,000 from Sindh. Incomprehensible numbers. So many people arrested that the regime opened detention camps all over Pakistan. Race courses My father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, studied politics at Berkeley and read law at Christ Church, Oxford, before becoming a lawyer and government minister in Karachi. Generations of politicians: My grandfather, Sir Shah Nawaz Khan Bhutto, founded the first political party in Sindh before Pakistan came into being in 1947. My Iranian-born mother, Nusrat, was later elected to the National Assembly herself. I learned at the knees of them all. sident Dressed in our clothes from Saks Fifth Avenue, Mir, I, Sanam and Shah Nawaz, meet Chinese dignitaries Chen-Yi (left) and Chou En-lai. ’You are human beings and have rights,’ my father exhorted the masses after he resigned as Foreign Minister and founded the Pakis-tan People’s Party in 1967. While I was experiencing democracy Radcliffe College, my father was wagir successful campaign in Pakistan to beo the first leader directly elected by people.
(Opposite) High treason: General Zia visited my father in detention at Murree ten days after the military coup. No wonder Zia looks so guilty. He was soon to cancel the elections he had promised, and to order public lashings to bludgeon the people into submission.
While my father attended his farcical trial in Lahore, I toured Pakistan to keep the people’s spirits up. In England, my brothers Shah and Mir (bottom, centre) led the international campaign to save my father’s life. Zia sent him to his death on April 4, 1979.
I felt a part of me had died as I laid, rose petals on my father’s grave before returning to Karachi to continue receiving the mourners crowding into our garden. Five months later, Zia cancelled the second scheduled elections and rearrested my mother and me.
March 15, 1978. Kishwar Qayyum Nazami, wife of a former member of the Provincial Assembly: My husband and I were arrested at 1.00 am. The police cordoned off the whole house. Our baby was only a few months old, so I had to take him with me to jail in an open military truck. At Kot Lakhpat Jail the administrators said there were no facilities for women political prisoners. They finally locked me in a tiny storage room with six other ladies, includ-ing Rehana Sarwar, the sister of one of Mr Bhutto’s lawyers and Begum Khakwani, the president of Punjab Women’s Wing. ’Why have we been arrested?’ Begum Khakwani asked the police. ’Because the decision is about to be reached on Bhutto,’ the policeman said. ’How do you know the decision is going to go against Mr Bhutto?’ she’d asked. The policeman had said nothing. We were searched roughly by the matrons who took my wedding ring and my watch. When I was released they said they’d lost them. There was no toilet in the room, just a pile of bricks in the corner, and no bedding. We couldn’t have slept anyway. The police started lashing the political prisoners in the next courtyard at midnight. Lines were painted on the men’s backs to show the number of lashes to be administered. The man who whipped them, a wrestler who wore a loin cloth and greased his body, ran towards the men from a distance to gather strength while an army officer sat on the side and counted the strokes. Twenty to thirty men were whipped in each session. We could hear their screams all night long. ’Jiye Bhutto!’ they shouted every time the lash landed. Long live Bhutto! I covered my ears and prayed my husband wasn’t among them. He had already been lashed in September 1977. The second morning of our imprisonment, the police suddenly released us. As we hurried out of the gate, we were re-arrested, this time on charges of maintaining law and order. The regime must have realised that it didn’t look good to have arrested us on charges pre-empting the court decision. And we were returned to the storage room. Mr Bhutto, whose cell we could see from our own, found out we were there, and had his lawyer bring us a basket of fruit. ’See how Zia treats women from respectable families,’ his note read. I was retumed to house arrest two weeks later because my baby got very ill in prison and I had no medicine. The other women didn’t get out for a month.
THE YEARS OF DETENTION hours of March 18. ’The police are here to see you,’ came the all too familiar message at 4.30 am. I knew why, but I didn’t want to know. I wanted to run to my mother, but she was already in detention in Lahore. I wanted to run to my father. I wanted to run anywhere, to Samiya, to the lawyers, to Mir or Shah Nawaz or Sunny. I couldn’t take this alone. I couldn’t. My God, help us all, I said over and over to myself, pacing through the empty house. The wailing began in the late afternoon. I could hear it coming from the kitchen, from the garden, from the gate to 70 Clifton. My heart speeded up until I thought it would explode. Suddenly the front door burst open and my cousin Fakhri threw herself on the entrance hall floor. ’Mur-derers!’ she screamed, banging her head on the floor in her grief. ’Mur-derers!’ Zia’s judges had found my father guilty and sentenced him to death. Fakhri, who had rushed past the startled army guards at the gate, was served with her own detention order within the hour. She would be de-tained with me for a week. I would be detained for three months.
’Pinkie? Is that you?’ I peer into the cell, but I am blinded by its darkness. The jail officials open the door and,I step inside my father’s death cell. It is damp and fetid. No sunlight has ever penetrated its thick cement walls. The bed covers more than half of the tiny cell, and is bolted to the ground with thick iron chains. For the first twenty-four hours my father was in the cell, he was chained to the bed. His ankles still bear the scars. Beside the bed is an open hole, the only lavatory facility provided for condemned prisoners. The stench is nauseating. ’Papa!’
I embrace him, my arms easily circling his body. He has lost a tremend-ous amount of weight. When my eyes adjust to the light, I see that he is covered with insect bites. Mosquitoes breed in the heat and dampness of his cell. No part of his body is without angry red swellings. I feel tears welling in the back of my throat. I swallow them down. I will not let myself cry in his presence. But he is smiling. Smiling! ’How did you get here?’ he is saying. ’I filed a petition with the provincial administration saying that as a family member I was being prevented from my rightful weekly visits to you under the Jail manual,’ I tell him. ’The Home Secretary gave me permission to see you.’
’The numbers of countries that have appealed to Zia for clemency is incredible,’ I tell him. ’I hear it all on the BBC. Brezhnev has written a letter, as has Hua Kuo Feng citing the close co-operation you forged with China. Assad has appealed from Syria, Anwar Sadat in Cairo, the President of Iraq, the Saudi government. Indira Gandhi. Senator McGovern. Prac-tically everyone, with the exception of President Carter. An unanimous resolution was adopted in the Canadian House of Commons appealing to the regime to commute your death sentence and 150 members of the British Parliament are urging their government to take steps. Greece. Poland. Amnesty International. The Secretary-General of the United Na-tions. Australia. France. Papa, there is no way Zia can go through with this.’ ’That’s heartening news,’ he says. ’But there will be no appeal from us.’ ’But Papa, you must appeal,’ I say, shocked. ’Through Zia’s courts? This whole process is a farce. Why prolong it?’ As we talk, he motions with his head for me to come closer. The jailers are just outside the cell door, listening, looking. I feel a piece of paper being pressed into my hand. ’Papa, you can’t just give up,’ I say loudly to distract the jailors. ’My God knows that I am innocent,’ my father replies. ’I will file my appeal in His court on the Day of Judgement. Now go. The hour is almost up. Go when you decide, not when they do.’ I hug him. ’The paper must not fall into the hands of the authorities, or your visits will be cancelled,’ he whispers rapidly into my ear. ’Till we meet again, Papa.’ I was searched on the way out of the prison. Nothing was found. I was searched for the second time when I was taken to see Mummy in detention in nearby Lahore, and again after I left her. Nothing was found. Sometimes the searchers were sympathetic, merely going through the motions. But I never knew until the moment came. At the airport to be flown back to my own detention in Karachi, I was made to sit under guard for three hours in a car, surrounded by the convoy of other military vehicles. Finally, the plane was ready. I could see through the car windows that the passengers were all aboard. The engines were turned on. The THE YEARS OF DETENTION headlights shone down the runway. The police got me out of the car and started walking me rapidly, always rapidly, towards the steps, one in front of me, one behind, guns drawn. A two-way radio crackled. And suddenly they reversed themselves and headed me back towards the car. I can still see -her fat body as she waddled towards me on the tarmac that night, her arms akimbo. I knew her all too well, an airport security woman who always seemed to be on duty when I flew in and out of Lahore and who was so unsympathetic I suspected the regime had deliber-ately planted her to search me. She looked mean, like the sort who took rings and watches during the searches and never returned them. Nothing was too small for her to search. She emptied lipsticks out of their cases and studied every page of my appointment diary. She enjoyed her work. ’I will not be searched by her. I will not be searched!’ I yelled, backing away from the car into the circle of guns surrounding me. ’I was searched going into jail to see my father. I was searched coming out. I was searched going to see my own mother in detention and searched coming out. I have been searched enough!’ The convoy of military vehicles pulled into position around me. More guns. More police. ’You have to be searched again,’ the police officer insisted. ’Otherwise, you won’t be allowed to leave in time for the plane.’ ’That’s fine with me,’ I screamed. What do I have left? You’ve sentenced my father to death. You’ve broken my mother’s head. You’ve sent me to live alone in Karachi, my mother to live alone in Lahore, put my father in a death cell. We can’t even speak to each other, comfort each other. I don’t care whether I live or die. So do what you will!’ I was almost hysterical. What other option did I have? I was up against the wall. The security woman hovered in the background, frightened by my outburst. But if she searched me she would surely find my father’s mes-sage. ’Come, come, let her be,’ the men began to murmur. ’You can go,’ the officer said. On the flight to Karachi, I was near collapse. My ear ached for the first time. Click. Click. The noise was so irritating that I found it hard to sleep when I returned to 70 Clifton. The regime finally called in a doctor, who began to conduct tests. I read the piece of paper from my father. It was advice to me on points to make in contesting my illegal detention. I tried to write out a draft for the court, but I felt too ill. The animals. It was strange what was happening to our family’s animals. On the day my father’s death sentence was handed down, one of his poodles died. One minute he was perfectly all right. The next he was dead. The following day the female poodle died, again for no apparent reason. I had a Siamese cat with me at 70 Clifton. She died too, on the third day. 120 THE JUDICIAL MURDER OF MY FATHER When there is danger to the master of a house, some Muslims believe, the animals sometimes deflect it and they die instead. All I could think of as I lay ill was that the danger to my father was so great that it had killed not one, but three of our pets. The thought was not comforting. Every morning when I fumed on the BBC news at 6.00 am, I prayed I’d hear that Zia was dead. But he was still alive. I challenged my detention at 70 Clifton, using the pointers from my father. The court postponed hearing my case in April and again in May. Each time I had to re-submit the petition for a hearing. On June 14, my lawyer brought me the best pre-birthday present I could have. There were no grounds for my detention, Justice Fakhr ud-Din had ruled in the first ruling in a preventive detention case. I was free. At last I could attend to my health. I had my first operation for my ear and sinuses at MidEast Hospital in Karachi at the end of June. As I came round from the anaesthetic all my suppressed fears surfaced. ’They’re killing my father! They’re killing my father!’ I heard myself screaming. My nose was stuffed with packing and I couldn’t breathe, though I felt calmer after my mother, who was still in detention in Lahore, was finally given permission to visit me under police escort. What a sorry world I found when I recovered. The Karachi branch of our newspaper, Musawaat, had been closed down by the regime in April and its presses seized. Both the editor and the printer had been arrested for printing ’objectionable material’, the term the regime used for our side of the story in my father’s case. Journalists at other newspapers had gone on strike in protest. Ninety were arrested and four sentenced to lashing, includ-ing a senior editor of the Pakistan Times who was physically handicapped. The international community was finally taking notice. By the summer of 1978, both the editor of Musawaat and the printer were among fifty political prisoners ’adopted’ by Amnesty International, the world-wide human rights organisation which monitors the status of political prisoners. Amnesty was investigating the cases of thirty-two others - with no help from the regime. Though Zia had promised his co-operation to two of Amnesty’s delegates during a fact-finding mission to Pakistan earlier in the year, the regime never responded to Amnesty’s report which was issued in March. I myself had met the delegates during their visit in January. I told them of our concern about the loss of fundamental human rights under Zia’s Martial Law regulations, the trying of civilians and political prisoners by military courts, and the ’cruel punishments’ being meted out, including the amputation of the left hand of a right-handed person or the right hand of a left-handed person convicted of theft. I was also anxious to get them to understand the unfairness of my father’s trial and told them of the inhuman THE YEARS OF DETENTION conditions he was being held in in solitary confinement. Naturally, they wanted to verify it. The delegates requested permission to visit my father in jail. The request was denied. April 28, 1978. Kot Lakhpat Jail. Dr Zafar Niazi, my father’s dentist: When I visited Mr Bhutto in Kot Lakhpat Jail in April, I found his gums were rapidly deteriorating. The conditions in the prison were unsanitary and his diet inadequate. The sub-tissue in his gums was inflamed and painful, but there were no facilities for me to give him any treatment. I’m not sure any treatment would have been effective, however, in these sub-human surroundings. I issued a report to the regime after my visit, stating that I could not be effective as Mr Bhutto’s dentist, unless his conditions were improved. I knew the regime would not take kindly to such a report. Many of my patients were foreign diplomats, and the regime was con-cerned, I am sure, that I would share my findings with them. As a precau-tion, I gave a copy of my report to my wife. ’If the army arrests me,’ I told her, ’give it to the foreign press.’ The police came for me two days later. The persecution of Dr Niazi and his family was just beginning. He was arrested twice, once while he was treating a patient under anaesthesia in his clinic. ’Just give me an hour to finish my patient,’ he asked the police. But they refused and he had to leave the patient in the chair. During this first arrest, the police raided his house at 2.00 am, turning over mattresses, pulling clothes out of the cupboards, looking for anything to pin on him. All they found was a half-bottle of wine left behind by an American associate of Dr Niazi’s, an orthodontist who practised at his clinic every three months. Dr Niazi was charged with having alcohol in his house. Dr Niazi, who was not a member of the PPP, nor in any way political, was held for six months in prison on the alcohol charge. By the time he was released, my father had been transferred from Kot Lakhpat Jail to another death cell in Rawalpindi Central Jail. Dr Niazi immediately applied for permission to see my father again. His application was denied.
I sit in a small room at Flashman s Hotel in Rawalpindi, waiting to visit my father. I keep looking at my watch. Where is Mummy? My father’s lawyers had managed to get a court order allowing us to visit my father together on my birthday. But it’s noon, and I have been waiting since 9.00 am for the police to fly her in from her detention in Lahore. Once again, they are stalling. I am worried about my mother. She has been having terrible headaches and is almost always exhausted. The strain is taking a terrible toll on her
I smooth out my shalwar khameez. I want to look smart for my parents on my birthday to show them my morale is high. 1.00 pm. 2.00 pm. This is one of the regime’s favourite tricks. I cannot count the number of times in my own periods of detention when I have been ready at the appointed hour to be taken to visit my father, only to wait hour after hour with no word. My visits to him every two weeks help keep me going. The regime knows that. So they either delay taking me, so that I only have half an hour with him, or they don’t come for me at all. Why haven’t they come? How can the regime violate a court order? 3.00 pm. 3.30 pm. The jail rules stipulate that all visitors must leave by sun-set. I remember my last birthday. My party on the lawns of Oxford seems more like ten years ago. I wonder now whether it ever happened at all.
4.00. The message that my mother has finally arrived comes from the airport. ’Pinkie, happy birthday!’ she says, giving me a hug when we meet at the entrance to the jail. Together we begin the walk to my father’s cell. ’It was your great good fortune to be born on the longest day of the year, Pinkie,’ my father says when we reach him. ’Even the regime couldn’t make the sun set early on your birthday.’ He is being held now in another dim cell in an interior courtyard of the prison. Army tents are set up all around the inner courtyard. Military guards are posted at the locked and barred entrance. What a farce of a civil trial. It’s a military operation. We are in a military outpost. Yüklə 1,3 Mb. Dostları ilə paylaş:
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