Daughter of the east by benazir bhutto
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I also found myself thrust into an unfamiliar Eastern tradition. As the only Bhutto around, I was suddenly considered the ’elder’ by the local villagers who began to come to the courtyard of a mud but on the lands to get me to settle their feuds and problems. A hangover from feudal times when the heads of clans held sway over every decision affecting their people, an abbreviated system of tribal justice still remained in the rural areas as did the tribes themselves. Though I was certainly not the head of the Bhutto tribe, the people insisted on coming to me anyway. Justice in Pakistan was too slow, too far away, too expensive and con-sidered too corrupt to bother with. The police had the reputation of arresting people for ’pocket money’, releasing them only upon payment of a bribe. The people felt better served by the faislas, or judgments, from a family they knew. But, after eight years in the West, I was discovering I was not well versed in dealing with the intricacies of rural life. ’His cousin murdered my son forty years ago,’ a toothless old man argued in front of me one morning while I sat on a rope bed holding court. ’The faisla from your great-uncle then was my marriage to the first daughter born to his family, if there was one. And there is. Look at her! But he won’t give her to me.’ I looked at the eight-year-old girl cowering behind her father. ’He never said a word when my daughter was born,’ the father retorted. ’I thought he had forgiven us for the crime committed so many years before. If I’d known he was going to claim her, I would have brought up my daughter knowing that she was not ours and that one day I would have to give her up. Now we are thinking of arranging a marriage for her with another family and they want her. We have given our word to the others. How can we break it?’ I shuddered at the thought of this poor little girl being haggled over. The fate of women in the rural areas was not always a happy one. Few of THE YEARS OF DETENTION them had any choice in their lives, or were ever asked what they wanted, ’You will not get the girl, but a cow and rupees 20,000 in compensation,’ I said to the old man. ’That is my judgment. You should have made your claim before she was betrothed to another.’ A cow for a girl - not an equation that’ had ever come up in discussions about the women’s move-ment at Radcliffe. But this was Pakistan. And the old man was furious, grumbling loudly when he left. My faisla the next day turned out to be a disaster. ’My wife has been kidnapped,’ a man cried in front of me. His father-in-law added to the din. ’The sky has fallen on our heads. Our lives are finished. All day my daughter’s children are crying for their mother. You must help us get her back.’ ’Who do you suspect?’ I asked, alarmed for the woman. When they told me I sent someone to the village to negotiate with the village elders. The young woman was successfully returned. And she was furious. ’I don’t want to live with my husband. I am in love with someone else,’ was the message she sent me. ’This is the third time I’ve run away and been returned. I thought you as a woman would understand and sym-pathise with me.’ I was flabbergasted. Did everyone but me know that the only way a woman could leave her husband in the harsh codes of tribal traditions was by being ’kidnapped’? An unhappy wife cannot go voluntarily. The poor young woman, I discovered later, never managed to escape again. Not for the first time I realised the conflict between tribal traditions and the human values of equality and free choice.
training were dispensing more and more sentences of death and life imprisonment. Injustice was also being speeded up in the hundreds of summary military courts where a single untrained officer heard testimony and awarded up to a year’s rigorous imprisonment and fifteen lashes on the spot. While the faislas I issued were not binding and the disputes could be taken to court, the accused in the military courts were allowed no lawyers and no right of appeal. Only by bribing the presiding officer at the rate of rupees 10,000 per lash, then about 100 dollars, could the victims escape on-the-spot punishment. The noose of Martial Law was tightening. Martial Law Order No. 77, May 27, 1980: The jurisdiction of the civil courts is replaced with the military courts in such crimes as treason and subversion of members of the armed forces. The punishments run from death by hanging to whipping and imprisonment for life.
Now anyone, anywhere, can be arrested without any right of appeal, on a charge he or she is unaware of, and be held indefinitely. On June 19, a procession of lawyers calling for the withdrawal of these new orders and for elections to return the government to civilian rule set out in Lahore. Eighty-six lawyers were beaten up and arrested. So were twelve others among a group arrested in Karachi in August for calling for the restoration of the Constitution of 1973. Students and trade union leaders were also being swept up by the regime in a reign of terror seemingly without end. When I returned to Karachi during the summer, my mother cautioned me to be very careful. But the regime was not taking any risks. When we went to Lahore for the wedding of a family friend in August, our hotel was surrounded by the police and we were externed from the province of Punjab. The police drove us under armed escort to the airport and put us on a plane bound for Karachi. It was clear that three years after the coup and the imposition of Martial Law Zia had still not been able to bludgeon the people into acquiescence nor win their support. Instead he was losing ground. Zia had almost no political support, just the control of the military. Even the members of the PNA, the coalition of politicians who had opposed my father and the PPP in the 1977 elections, some of whom had subsequently become Zia’s minis-ters, were defecting. When, six months after my father’s death, Zia had dispensed with their ministries and banned all political parties, the PNA found themselves in the political wilderness. As a result, shortly after my mother and I were detained at Al-Murtaza in October 1979, some components of the PNA had started offering to co-operate with the PPP against Zia. We had taken their advances then as political manoeuvring aimed at gaining leverage with the military regime. ’If you don’t want us as Ministers,’ they were effectively telling Zia, ’we’ll go to the PPP.’ Now, in the autumn of 1980, the overtures from our old adversary, the PNA, began again. This time we had to take them seri-ously. Desperate to create a political base, Zia and his few remaining sup-porters were resorting to bribes. Every day brought new reports of Zia’s seduction campaign. Dhoki, the son of a poor PPP leader, who worked in a bicycle shop and earned rupees two a day, was offered rupees 1,000 to
THE YEARS OF DETENTION forsake the party for the Muslim League, a PNA faction still supporting Zia. A PPP member as powerful as Ghulam Mustafa Jatoi, the President of Sindh and a former Chief Minister, was offered - and considered accepting - the Prime Ministership of the regime by Zia himself. There was great danger of a political re-alignment orchestrated by Zia, fooling the people into thinking that a civilian solution to Zia’s hated military regime had been reached. ’We have to outmanoeuvre Zia before he outmanoeuvres us,’ my mother said to me in September after Jatoi was offered the Prime Minister-ship. ’Much as I hate the idea, perhaps we should take up the feelers put out by the PNA. There is no point in splintering the opposition to Zia.’ At first I was appalled. ’It will cause a storm among the party leaders,’ I protested. ’How can we forget that it was the PNA who brought the charges of election rigging against the PPP in the first place; the PNA who paved the way for the Army takeover? They were Zia’s ministers when he sent Papa to his death.’ ’But what other choice do we have?’ Mummy said. ’Now it is Jatoi. Tomorrow it will be others. When ideal conditions do not present them-selves, you have to deal with ugly realities.’ She called for a secret meeting of the thirty-odd members of the PPP Central Executive Committee. We knew we were taking a great risk -political gatherings had been banned - but if we just sat silently by we were in fact acquiescing to the regime. This meeting, like all the others, was called at 70 Clifton. The leaders came from as far away as the Northwest Frontier province and Baluchistan. And predictably, the debate was bitter. ’The PNA are murderers, murderers,’ said one member from Sindh. ’If we do a deal with them today, then what is there to stop us from dealing directly with General Zia tomorrow?’ ’But Mao Tse-Tung co-operated with Chiang Kai-Shek when the Japan-ese invaded China,’ countered the aged Sheikh Rashid, the Marxist in the party. ’If they could co-operate in the national interest, I say we should co-operate with the PNA.’ Back and forth the argument raged. ’We agree that they are opportunists and self-seekers,’ I offered. ’But what can we do? We can either wait for the initiative to slip out of our hands or swallow the bitter pill of the PNA and seize the initiative ourselves. I suggest we compromise and form an alliance without giving up our separate party identities.’ After seven hours pragmatism finally prevailed and each one of us reluctantly agreed to respond to the PNA overture. The framework for the MRD, the Movement to Restore Democracy, was formed. ’There is no use in both of us landing up in jail again at the same time, so you keep a low political profile,’ my mother told me. ’That way one of us, anyway, can stay on the outside to lead the party.’
The process was further complicated by the bitterness of many of the exchanges leading to the shaky new coalition, especially over the wording of the proposed MRD charter: whether the elections of 1977 were or were not rigged, whether ’execution or ’assassination should be used in describing my father’s death. It took four months, from October 1980 to February 1981, to break the deadlock and work out a draft agreement among all ten parties, and an uneasy one at that. The Muslim League party of Mohammed Khan Junejo, who went on to become Zia’s hand-picked Prime Minister, backed out at the eleventh hour. The other leaders and party deputies finally met together face to face for the first time on the night of February 5, 1981, at 70 Clifton. I looked at my father’s former opponents now sitting in his house to strike a political deal with his widow, the Chairperson of the PPP, and his daughter. What a strange business politics is. Nasrullah Khan, the fez-wearing leader of the Pakistan Democratic Party sat on my mother’s right. Opposite me sat Kasuri, the fleshy faced representative of Asghar Khan’s more moderate Tehrik-e-Istiqlal. Bearded leaders from the religious party Jamaat-ul-Ulema-e-Islam were on one side of the room; on the other, Fatehyab, head of the small leftist Mazdoor party, wearing starched white churidaar-kurta, loose shirt with tight pyjamas. There were around twenty people in all, most of them from the former PNA coalition. I had to keep reminding myself that the point was to unseat Zia, that the point, despite our divergent views, was to cement a political coalition to force Zia to hold elections. But it was hard. Cigarette smoke and tempers rose among the velvet-panelled walls and chandeliers in the drawing room, and the meeting went on so long it had to be reconvened in the morning. At one stage a former PNA leader tried to justify his party’s role in the agitation of 1977. I was surprised by the implied criticism of the PPP here in our own house. ’We are here to discuss a coalition for democracy, not to discuss what you think of us or we of you,’ I said in an icy tone. ’Yes, we must look to the future, not to the past,’ Nasrullah Khan said, trying to calm us both. Still, I found it difficult to watch the politicians drinking coffee out of my father’s china, sitting on his sofa, using his telephone to make excited
THE YEARS OF DETENTION calls to friends around the country to explain: ’I’m at 70 Clifton! Yes, really. Mr Bhutto’s house!’ Yasmin, Amina and Samiya prevailed upon me to calm down. ’They have come to you. It’s a vindication of the strength of the PPP,’ Samiya said. ’You wanted to form this coalition,’ Amina added. ’It makes political sense, so take the difficulties in your stride.’ I swallowed my objections, as did the other leaders who finally, one by one, signed the charter uniting all the parties. And on February 6, 1981, the Movement to Restore Democracy was born. The news of the signing of the MRD charter, which many heard on the BBC, electrified the length and breadth of Pakistan. The psychological boost it gave to the people led many to interpret it as a signal to launch a protest against the injustices of the Martial Law regime. The students in the Frontier province were the first to take to the streets. Immediately Zia served my mother and me with externment orders to keep us from visiting the wounded. The discontent soon spilled over into Sindh and Punjab where univer-sity professors, lawyers and doctors joined the swelling protest movement. More student protests broke out in Multan, Bahwalpur, Sheikupura, Quetta. ’Thank God for the MRD,’ taxi drivers, shopkeepers and small traders began to whisper. ’Zia’s time is finally over.’ Our cook came back from Karachi’s Empress Market to report that ’even the butchers are ready to strike at the call of the MRD.’ Zia knew he was in a comer. He closed down universities all over Pakistan and banned meetings of more than five people. But the demonstra-tions continued, described by Time magazine as ’the most serious wave of opposition that has faced General Zia’. A secret meeting of the MRD was called for February 27 in Lahore. Zia reacted quickly, arresting many of the MRD leaders on February 21. Other members of the MRD and PPP were issued restriction orders externing them from the Punjab. ’. . . Your entry in the Punjab is deemed as pre-judicial to public safety and maintenance of public order as well as public interest,’ my own order from the Governor of the Punjab read. My mother tightened the agreement we had made about limiting my political activity. ’Do nothing political for the time being. If I am arrested you must be there to provide leadership,’ she told me firmly. The situation was becoming explosive, close to toppling Zia, and I chafed under the restrictions. It fell to my mother to try and attend the secret meeting of the MRD in Lahore. All the roads to the city were sealed off by the police and every car was being searched. The members of the MRD still at large had to travel to the meeting by circuitous routes. My mother went by train disguised as a grandmother in a burqa, accompanied by her ’grandson’, the thirteen-year-old son of one of our staff. 146 DEMOCRACY’S CHALLENGE TO MARTIAL LAW The police raided the meeting and arrested the members, including my mother who was externed back to Karachi. But not before the MRD delivered its ultimatum, a call for the end of Martial Law and for elections within three months. ’We demand that Zia quit immediately, failing which the Martial Law regime will be removed by the irresistible will of the people,’ the MRD announced in Lahore. The MRD set March 23 as the target date for massive strikes and demonstrations across Pakistan. Some of the PPP councillors elected in the 1979 local elections agreed to resign and call for Zia’s resignation at the time of the strike. The countdown had begun for Zia’s downfall and the return of civilian government to Pakistan. The clock was finally ticking for Zia.
I am sitting in the living room of 70 Clifton with a group of party workers when the telephone rings. It is Ibrahim Khan, the Reuters re-presentative in Karachi. ’What is your reaction to the news?’ he asks me. ’What news?’ ’A Pakistan International Airlines plane has been hijacked.’ ’By whom?’ I ask, startled. A PIA plane had never been hijacked before. ’Nobody knows yet,’ he says. ’Nobody knows anything, who the hijack-ers are, where they’re taking the plane, or what they want. I’ll try and keep you posted. But may I have a reaction?’ ’All hijacking is bad, whether it is a plane or a nation,’ I respond auto-matically. When I hang up the phone, the PPP members are looking at me expectantly. ’One of our planes has been hijacked,’ I say. ’That’s all I know.’
SOLITARY CONFINEMENT IN SUKKUR JAIL
Why am I here? I don’t understand. Jail, now. A remote jail in the desert of Sindh. It is cold. I hear the prison clock strike 1.00, then 2.00. I can’t sleep. The chill desert wind sweeps through the open bars of my cell, four walls of open bars. The cell is more like a huge cage, an enormous space with only a rope cot in it. I twist and turn on the cot, my teeth chattering. I have no sweater, no blanket, nothing. Only the shalwar khameez I had been wearing when I was arrested in Karachi five days ago. One of the jailers had felt sorry for me and quietly passed me a pair of socks. But she was so frightened of being caught for her charity that this morning she had asked for them back. My bones ache. If only I could see, I could at least walk around. But the electricity is turned off in my cell at night. From 7.00 onwards, there is nothing but the cold darkness. The police had come for me on March 7 at 70 Clifton. But I wasn’t there. I had spent the night with Samiya, keeping away from the policy meeting my mother was holding at 70 Clifton with the leaders of the MRD. The police had evidently gone quite berserk in their efforts to locate me, raiding my cousin Fakhri s house and 70 Clifton where they first arrested my mother, then tore the place apart searching for me. ’What do you think she is, a beetle?’ my sister Sunny had asked the police when they emptied matchboxes searching for me. Fanning out across Karachi, the police had gone on to raid the houses of my old school friends, including that of the Punthakeys, a Zoroastrian family. Their 25-year-old daughter Paree was taken to the police station where the police interrogated her for seven hours. Paree and her family were members of a religious minority, and under Zia’s policy of Islamisa-tion, anyone who was not a Muslim was now particularly liable to punish-ment. ’We know how to deal with religious minorities in this country,’ the police had warned Paree’s relatives when they contacted the authorities to protest against her detention. ’You have no place in politics in this country. You shouldn’t get involved.’ 148 SOLITARY CONFINEMENT IN SUKKUR JAIL After searching the houses of two other friends, Putchie and Humo, the police finally caught up with me the next day at the home of Dr Ashraf Abbasi, the former Deputy Speaker of the National Assembly and one of my mother’s doctors in Karachi. ’The police are here and want to search the house,’ Dr Abbasi’s son Safdar told us as I was preparing to take advantage of her direct-dial phone to ring up some friends in Islamabad. We looked at him in amazement. As I knew nothing about the raids and had steadfastly avoided any MRD political activity, I thought the police had come for Dr Abbasi, or possibly her son Munawwar. ’Tell them there’s no need to raid the house,’ I told Safdar. ’Ask them who they want.’ He came back a moment later. ’They have come for you,’ he said. There was something new and terrible about this arrest. I sensed it when I was told to get into the back of an open jeep crammed with constables rather than one of the cars they had used to take me into detention before. I refused, and finally they let me get in front. The size of the military convoy following me through the empty streets was also bigger, and the destination ominous: a police station. I had never been taken to a police station before. What was going on? No one would tell me as I sat for 5 hours in the bare room, watching the policemen smoke cigarette after cigarette and spit betel-nut juice at the already stained walls. A look of fear was frozen on all their faces. This time, I was to find out shortly, Zia had gone beyond his previous bounds of repression and brutality. What the authorities knew, but I didn’t, was that thousands of people were being rounded up all over Pakistan in the biggest sweep ever. Am-nesty International, whose figures were always conservative, estimated that over six thousand people were arrested in March 1981 alone. In the five days since the hijacking of the PIA airliner on March 2, Zia had decided to use the hijacking as a pretext to stop the groundswell of support for the MRD movement. Everybody with the slightest connection with the MRD or the PPP was being imprisoned. The Niazis were arrested in Islamabad. The police came for Amina, too, though when they saw she was nine months pregnant they took her husband Salim instead. She went into labour out of shock. Yahya Bakhtiar, the head of my father’s legal defence team and former Attorney General of Pakistan, was arrested in Baluchistan. Faisal Hayat, a former member of the National Assembly and the nephew of Khalid Ahmed, the Deputy Com-missioner of Larkana who had been forced into exile, was arrested in Lahore, as again, were many of the women members of the PPP. Qazi Sultan Mahmood, the assistant manager of Flashmari s Hotel, was arrested for the third time in Rawalpindi. So were Irshad Rao, the editor of Musawaat in Karachi, and Pervez Ali Shah, a leading member of the Sindh PPP. The list went on and on. And our treatment was reaching a new level of barbarity.
THE YEARS OF DETENTION ’Where is my motherT I asked a group of policemen at the station. ’In Karachi Central jail,’ they said. ’In the Rest House7’ I asked. The Rest House was the relatively comfort-able accommodation for visiting jail officials where my father had been held at the beginning. ’In a cell,’ they told me. I gasped. My mother, the widow of the former Prime Minister, in a Class C cell with no running water, no bedding, no air? ’Where are you taking me7’ I asked the police. ’To join your mother,’ they said. They were lying. I was held incommunicado for five days in the Karachi Central Jail Rest House, now stripped of its furniture to the barest minimum. The officials there claimed they didn’t know my mother’s whereabouts, and denied that she was even being held in Karachi. I was also refused permission to see my lawyer. I had no clothes with me, only what I had on when I was arrested. I had no hairbrush or comb, no tooth brush or toothpaste, no supplies at all. I was also under medication for female problems brought on by the cumulative stress. I needed more medicine, but there was no doctor or woman I could talk to to say what I needed. Yüklə 1,3 Mb. Dostları ilə paylaş:
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