Daughter of the east by benazir bhutto
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Even so, the voting was a resounding rejection of Martial Law and Zia’s policy of Islamisation. Six of his nine Cabinet Ministers who ran for the National Assembly were defeated, as were many of his other as-sociates. The candidates backed by fundamentalist religious parties in the
Any hopes that Zia was truly moving towards a democracy were dashed less than a week after the elections. Before the newly elected National Assembly even met, Zia announced wide-ranging changes in the constitu-tion. His amendments reconfirmed his presidency for five years and not only gave him the sweeping power to personally appoint his own Prime Minister, the chiefs of the armed forces and the four provincial Governors, but also to dismiss the National and Provincial Assemblies at will. What was different about his new government? Nothing. Though Zia was ostensibly creating a ’civilian’ government under pressure from Western governments, Martial Law was still in effect. Though he had given himself the more acceptable title of ’President’, he was still Chief Martial Law Admini-strator and Army Chief-of-Staff, which ensured that the National Assembly stayed under the thumb of the Army. Zia would lift Martial Law, he said in an interview with Time, ’several months’ after he had assumed the presidency and would resign at the same time as Army Chief-of-Staff. ’When I am sworn in on March 23 as President, I think I should have a civilian ex-terior,’ he said, as if he could fool people with a change of clothes. He couldn’t. Martial Law would not be lifted for another year. Zia is still Army Chief-of-Staff. And dressing occasionally in a long tunic instead of a uniform does not change his stripes. On March I, four days after the elections, Ayaz Samoo was sentenced to death. On March 5, Nasser Baloach was hanged. We were all extremely sad when we heard the news of Nasser Baloach’s death. Zia had even turned a deaf ear to the petitions for clemency from nine of the newly elected members of the Provincial and National Assem-blies. Several of the other political prisoners in Karachi Central Jail had managed to sneak out last-minute mercy petitions for Nasser Baloach themselves, but Zia had responded by transferring them to other jails. After our disclosure of the secret documents, he had been compelled by international pressure to commute the death sentences of the other three defendants. But Nasser Baloach was issued a ’black warrant’. The labour leader had gone to the gallows, the Guardian reported from Islamabad, ’shouting anti-military slogans, including ”long live Bhutto”.’ 237 TAKING ON THE DICTATOR Sadly I went through the thick file of correspondence we had sent out and received on Nasser Baloach’s behalf, reading and re-reading the letter he had written to me on the back of the foil from a cigarette packet and smuggled out of his death cell in Karachi Central Jail. ’May God give you and Begum Sahiba health and long life so that the poor people of Pakistan can get guidance from you,’ his note began. ’We are passing our days with great bravery and courage in our cells like Chairman Shaheed [Martyr] Butto who did not bow his head in front of the military junta. We will never beg for life from this Military regime .... We prefer the honour of the Party to our own lives. We pray for your success. May God help you.’ I had prayed for Nasser Baloach for months. Now, with great pain, I prayed for his soul in private and at the religious ceremony we held for him at the home of one of the party leaders in. exile. I felt I’d lost a brother. He had lived in Malir, one of the most poverty-stricken areas in Karachi where he and his wife and children shared their small home with his parents and his brother and family. Nasser Baloach was particularly proud of his daughters and talked about them often. One had married while I was in sub-jail at 70 Clifton in 1983 and I had helped as best I could by asking Fakhri to give the family some money to help with the expenses of the wedding. As I sat down now to write his family a condo-lence letter, I felt their anguish as my own. So reportedly did many other people. Extra police, I read in the British papers, had to be called in to control the crowds that gathered outside Karachi Central Jail the night of his hanging. When the family took his body for burial, the crowds were so large the police fired tear gas to disperse the mourners. Zia’s new civilian government had begun with bloodstained hands. Would Ayaz Samoo be their next victim? ’I am writing to seek your help in saving the life of Ayaz Samoo, the labour representative at Naya Daur Motors who has been sentenced to death by a military court after an in camera trial on March I, 1985,’ started a letter to those on our mailing list signed by Dr Niazi for the Human Rights Committee of the Pakistan People’s Party. ’Dear Members/ Officeholders,’ wrote Safdar Hamdani, our exile coordinator who cor-responded with overseas units and who lived in the Central YMCA. ’In light of the important details regarding the Ayaz Samoo case, please redouble your efforts in: (a) meeting with your local MP/Parliamentarian; (b) arranging delegations to meet their MPs/Parliamentarians; (c) getting signatures on a Petition: (d) contacting Human Rights Organisations; (e) contacting the press.’ The details of the trumped-up case against Ayaz Samoo became clear after a sympathiser in Pakistan smuggled us out the Police report on the case. Samoo had been charged and sentenced to death for the murder of
Ayaz Samoo fitted none of the descriptions. He was dark in colour, slight, and five-foot-four-inches high. He was twenty-two years of age and had had no wound when he was arrested. But the regime didn’t bother itself with such details. They were so eager to convict Bhopali’s killer that not one but three different military courts were trying or had tried three different defendants - and found them all guilty of committing the same crime! But we needed proof of Samoo’s innocence. Real proof. It came on a piece of cloth, smuggled out of Samoo’s death cell by his lawyer. On it was a sample of Samoo’s blood. The police in Pakistan had made a big show of the blood found in the get-away car, recovered after the murder. The blood in the car had been analysed by one Dr Sherwani, and included in the police report. Samoo’s blood had never been tested to see whether it matched that of the assailant. We found a pathologist in London to iden-tify Samoo’s blood type. We had the proof, which we circulated among our mailing list: Samoo’s blood type was not the same as that found in the car. But the death sentence was not lifted. ’My dear Sister,’ Ayaz Samoo wrote from Karachi Central Jail on March 23. ’I am grateful that I have the opportunity to write to you. Our de-termination is stronger than mountains and taller than the Himalayas. Revolutionaries never, never, yield to the dictators. Life is given by Allah, not Zia. ’I will prefer to be hanged than live under the oppressor. To give in is not our principle. We are not ready to call a donkey a horse, or black, white, out of fear of Martial Law. My dear sister, your brother, Ayaz Samoo, assures you that the terrorist Zia ul-Haq can sever my neck, but he cannot bend it .... We the martyrs will keep shedding our blood. One day the dawn will bring the news of our blood to the people, In-sha’allah . . . . We will live and live forever. Your brother, Ayaz Samoo.’ I took the information about Ayaz Samoo’s case with me everywhere, back to America in April where I was invited to deliver the Rama Mehta Lecture at Harvard, then to speak to the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, then on to Strasbourg in June where I addressed the members of the European Parliament. ’Ayaz Samoo, a labour leader and supporter of the Party, languishes today in a death cell, accused of a crime he did not commit, uncertain of his fate, knowing that his blood group does not even match the blood group of the assailant in the incident which he is
TAKING ON THE DICTATOR accused of being involved in,’ I said in a press conference in Strasbourg. ’When the conscience of the world is justly aroused against apartheid and against human rights violation elsewhere, then that conscience ought not to close its eyes to the murder by military courts which takes place in a country which receives substantial aid from the West itself.’ Just before I left for America in the spring of 1985, all fifty-four pris-oners held in Lahore because of their alleged involvement in Al-Zulfikar were sentenced to life imprisonment, along with forty others in absentia, including my brothers, Mir and Shah. Once again the regime was using the buzzword of terrorism for its political ends. ’Amnesty International has been concerned over the years that the blanket charge of association with Al-Zulfikar may be used to imprison some people involved in non-violent political dissent,’ Amnesty’s 1985 report charged. Over seventy prisoners had been executed, more than one hundred sentenced to death.
London EC2 June 18th SAVE THE LIFE OF AYAZ SAMOO Dear Member, you must act quickly and do your best to save the life of this innocent 22 year old son of Pakistan . . . Contact everyone on your lists. The mercy petition of Ayaz Samoo is to be filed today. Please act fast as there is very little time. Letters were sent to Zia. Telegrams. Diplomatic pleas. Foreign pressure. Ayaz Samoo was hanged on June 26, 1985. Crash! What was going on in the kitchen? Someone must have left the window open, I thought, going into my kitchen at the Barbican to pick up the things knocked off the wall by the wind. Everything was in place. Could it be Ayaz Samoo’s spirit, I wondered? I said a prayer to bless his soul. The next morning I was back at work with Nahid, Bashir Riaz, Safdar, Sumblina, Yasmin and Mrs Niazi, writing letters to all the people who had taken an interest in Ayaz Samoo’s case and answering condolence letters from such varied sources as Lord Avebury in the House of Lords, Elliott Abrams in the United States, and Karel Van Miert in Brussels who along with the Socialist Group of the European Parliament was advancing
’I was very sad to learn of the execution of Mr Ayaz Samoo, though not altogether surprised,’ Lord Avebury had written. ’It does show that Zia is completely impervious to humanitarian appeals, and I’m afraid he knows that, whatever he does, it will not affect the largesse from the US, or the Reagan administration’s determination to see Pakistan as part of the ”free world”.’ We were working quietly in our sadness when suddenly there was a loud thud in the hall where we had stacks of papers and files and manilla envelopes. Startled, we all looked up at each other. ’One of the files must have fallen off the table,’ Bashir said, going into the hall. ’Nothing has fallen,’ I said, remembering the night before. ’You’re right,’ he said, returning. ’Do you think it’s Ayaz Samoo’s soul?’ I asked the others. ’Oh God bless him,’ said Mrs Niazi, who is a deeply religious person. ’We should have a Quran Khani for him here in the flat. It will give his soul peace so he can rest.’ Nahid quickly organised a group of Pakistani women to come to the flat that afternoon. We all read verses from the Holy Quran aloud, hour after hour, until we had completed several complete readings of the Holy Book. Ayaz Samoo’s spirit never caused a noise again. I was supposed to leave for the south of France on July I to have a holiday with my mother and the rest of the family. But one thing after another kept interfering; political meetings, visits from PPP leaders coming in from Pakistan who couldn’t change their plans and so on. My mother called to tell me how sorry Shah Nawaz was that I was missing the barbecue he had planned for me, as did Shah himself. We’d only been together a few times since my release. I was looking forward very much to seeing them all - Mir, Shah, their little girls Fathi and Sassi, their Afghan wives Fauzia and Rehana. But it wasn’t until the middle of the month that I was able to join them. On the morning of July 17, I threw my clothes into a suitcase and rushed for the airport. Ahead lay two weeks of much needed peace in Cannes after the strain and tragedies of the last month. I couldn’t wait. I had had enough of death.
IZ
Where were they? Had they forgotten to meet me? My eyes scanned the busy Nice airport as I walked past immigration. ’Surprise!’ Shah Nawaz said, leaping out from behind a column at the airport. He embraced me, his eyes twinkling with mischief. ’It was his idea to hide,’ Mummy came up, smiling as she kissed me. Shah picked up my suitcase and immediately set it down with a mock grimace. ’Oof. What have you got in there? Gold?’ We laughed as we walked out of the airport. The fronds of the palm trees on the French Riviera moved lazily in the slow wind. After the tension of the past few months, it was lovely seeing the family again, and being with my mischiev-ous younger brother, always full of laughter and light-heartedness. He was my favourite amongst the children and we had a special bond, he the youngest and I the eldest. I shook my head, smiling as I caught the female glances and the heads turned to look at Shah. He was slim and athletic and I could never walk with him without noticing the admiring glances from passers-by. Shah and my mother sat in the front seat of the car and I in the back while we drove at speed into Cannes. Shah talked non-stop, looking as often at me through the rear-view mirror as at the road, his eyes sparkling under his long, thick eyelashes, his hair glistening with golden highlights from water-skiing. Dressed in a crisp white shirt and white trousers, he’d never looked more handsome and fit. I was relieved to see him looking so well. Shah had seemed very thin to me during our brief visits in the year and a half since I’d arrived in England. For the first time I could see that he was putting on some weight, as was I. He was no longer worried about my detentions in Pakistan, nor was I especially worried about him or Mir. There had been no actions committed or claimed by Al-Zulfikar for a long time and I felt there was no immediate danger to the family. Zia was a long way away from the sunwashed beaches of Cannes where Shah was now living with his wife, Rehana, and our conversation in the car was not about politics, but about mangoes. ’So what sort of mangoes did you bring us?’ Shah said into the rear-view mirror. ’We have been waiting for them for two weeks.’ 242 THE DEATH OF MY BROTHER ’Sindhris,’ I said, ’though I prefer Chaucers. They’re smaller and sweeter.’ ’A Sindhi who doesn’t prefer Sindhris?’ Shah said in mock horror. ’Are you sure you’re from Sindh, Madam? Do you often confess to such acts of high treason?’ I laughed. Shah always made me laugh, made everyone in the family laugh. My jet lag and general tiredness seemed to slip away. Shah’s vitality and zest for life was contagious. How did he do it? He had been so young when the world of politics had engulfed us. When he was born, Papa had just become a Minister. My mother was busy accompanying him on official events and my grandparents had died. No one, it seemed, had been able to spoil Shah in the way the three of us had been. So Shah developed a special attachment to me. He wrote me many letters at Harvard in his childish scrawl. As he grew older, we would play squash together in the summers. He was more fond of sports than studies. He was a key player for his school basketball team and at home he lifted weights to build up his body. But sports didn’t equate with studies for my father. Shah was packed off to a military cadet school, Hassan Abdal, to instil some ’discipline’ into him. There, to the surprise of the other students who thought the privileged son of the Prime Minister would be soft, he dis-tinguished himself in the physical fitness and ’survival courses’. But he wasn’t happy at Hassan Abdal and soon cajoled Mummy into talking Papa into calling him back to the Prime Minister’s House and the Inter-national School at Islamabad. Shah Nawaz. In Urdu, the King of Kindness. Shah was so generous you never knew what he would do. In Paris a year earlier, on two occasions he had got change to buy a Herald Tribune while I waited at a cafe. Both times he returned empty-handed, after giving the money to poor people holding hats in the street. He literally gave away the shirt off his back. ’Take it, take it,’ he would insist if someone admired what he was wearing, once proffering the new blazer my mother had bought him. He had empath-ised with the poor since childhood. He had built a straw but in the garden at 70 Clifton and slept in it for weeks, wanting to feel the deprivations of the poor. He was the only one of us who didn’t go to Harvard, but went instead to the American College in Leysin, Switzerland. There he fell in love with a beautiful Turkish girl and made lots of friends. Much to my fathei s consternation, his grades didn’t improve. As often as not he and his friends would drive down to Paris for an evening at Regine’s. In 1984, he insisted on taking Yasmin and me to the famous night spot. Although seven years had passed, Shah was received with recognition and gusto. Yet, I always suspected he was the brightest of us all. He had the most political exposure, my father taking him to campaign meetings. He ad- TAKING ON THE DICTATOR dressed his first press conference at twelve. He had a sharp political sense, a gut reaction to knowing what people were thinking, what they were feeling in their hearts, what made their blood pound. A person is born with such a talent, be it for music, ballet or art. And he had it for politics. ’Shah reminds me of myself when I was young,’ my father often said to me. This was our second family reunion in Cannes. ’Do whatever you want during the rest of the year, but for the month of July I want you all to be with me,’ my mother had told all of us. The family holiday the year before at Auntie Behjat’s house in Cannes had not been a great success. Our schedules conflicted and we hadn’t been able to spend very much time together. And Mir and I had argued constantly about our differing approaches to unseating Zia. ’Zia has turned Pakistan into a state of armed terror,’ Mir had insisted. ’Only violence can answer violence.’ ’Violence only breeds violence,’ I had retorted. ’That kind of struggle cannot deliver anything lasting to the people. Any permanent change must come peacefully and politically through elections, backed by the mandate of the people.’ ’Elections? What elections? Zia will never give up. He will have to be forced out by armed struggle,’ Mir countered. ’The army will always have more arms than any guerrilla forces,’ I argued. ’The state’s capability will always be greater than any group of dissidents. Armed struggle is not only impractical, but counterproductive.’ Back and forth our argument raged, our voices rising until Shah slipped away to go swimming, to go to a cafe, to go anywhere that we were not. ’I can’t bear it when you guys argue like that,’ he told me. This year, to Shah’s relief, Mir and I had agreed to disagree and not to discuss politics at all. Shah’s interest in politics had expanded beyond Pakistan. Having lived in several Middle Eastern countries since he was forced to leave Pakistan, he had become interested in the complexities of the politics of the Lebanon, Libya and Syria. ’You have a soft comer in your heart for Mrs Thatcher,’ he often teased me. ’That’s not true, Shah. She’s right wing and I’m not,’ I’d protest, citing among other things, the high unemployment figures in Britain. He’d shake his head and wave his finger at me. ’No, I’m right,’ he’d say. ’You’re soft on her because she’s a woman.’ Circumstance, not choice, had thrown him into the dangerous, shad-owed world of AI-Zulfikar. In Kabul, it had been Shah’s job to train the volunteers in Al-Zulfikai s forces. Like everything Shah did, he approached his task with great enthusiasm and mischief, once slipping through the
Shah, like the rest of us, had had his future derailed by the coup and the assassination of our father. His long-time engagement to the Turkish girl had been broken off by her family when they learned of his involve-ment in AI-Zulfikar. He had had to postpone his dream of going into business as well, though recently he had been talking about raising the capital to build blocks of flats in France. ’You and Mir can do the politics. I’ll make the money for the family,’ he had said during one of our get-togethers. He was also interested in intelligence systems, and read extensively on the subject. ’When you and Mir are back in Pakistan involved in politics, just remember you have a little brother who can help you if you give him a high post in intelligence,’ he told us. ’Leaders cannot be accessible to all segments of society, no matter how much they might want to be. Modem societies are too large and complex. You’ll need someone you can depend on to tell you what the trends are, what the moods are, what’s happening at the grassroots. So both of you remember, when the time comes, I’m here.’
’Until July 30,’ I said. ’No. No. No!’ he protested. ’You must stay longer. Mir is leaving on the 30th and I’m not going to let you go, too. You have to stay with me for a week at least.’ ’I have to go to Australia,’ I told him. ’You have to go nowhere,’ he said. ’You’re staying with me.’ ’All right, all right,’ I gave in. I knew I couldn’t stay. But I didn’t want to dampen Shah’s enthusiasm. Of all the family, he had made the most effort to see me, even flying in to Paris unannounced in the spring of 1984 when I had gone on political business. ’The editor of the Red Star wants to interview you,’ read one message after another from the receptionist at the hotel I was staying in. The Red Star? I’d never heard of it, but then I got many requests from people and organisations I’d never heard of. The third time the editor of the Red Star phoned, I took the call. ’Heads of State are easier to contact than you,’ Shah had laughed. ’It’s easier to get through to Walid Jumblatt at Druze headquarters in Beirut than it is to get hold of Ms Benazir Bhutto.’ Every morning in Paris, Shah called my hotel room at 6.00 am. ’You’re
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