I AM SHIA – ITS NOT SAFE OUTSIDE
How this could be possible? I shook my head in disbelief. “Ibn-e-Raza shot dead!!!.”How some one can be so cruel, so vicious……..?, all these thoughts clouded my mind. In state of disbelief I stood up, changed my clothes and sat in a car. My mother sitting next to me was continuously crying. “He was such a nice boy, he was………” she was crying so hard that words seemed disappeared from her mouth.
I rolled the mirror of my window down as slight wave of wind touched my hairs and I took a deep breath and lost in the ocean of thoughts……. “I want to be pilot, soha baji”, he had once told me. “I have scored the first position in my matriculation”, how happy he was on that day. I still remember when he last called me, he told me that he was very near his dream, his goal soon we all will be seeing him as a pilot. His parents were so proud of him as he was the only child to them.
The tears rolled down my cheeks and I soon realized that we have reached our destination, when car suddenly stopped. I was standing right in front of Imambargah in Rizvia Society. It was a place where his dead body was shifted. To my conscience it was not the first time I was standing there, in fact it was second time. It was over my brother;s dead body 3 months ago. He was also gunned down. Now again I was here for my cousin. With trembling feet I entered in the Imambargah, from the entrance I could hear his mother cry. I went in the hall, there was coffin right there with his dead body in it. I saw his face; it was pale as he was sound asleep.
Soon there was call, to his destination. They took his coffin and went to the graveyard leaving behind his mother and his family in deep grief. It was time for us too to go home. I stood up and came outside with my mother. Our car was waiting outside, we sat in car. I once again looked back at an Imambargah with a wish not again!!!. But deep in my heart I knew I will come back this time for some one else.
The 40 million Shia of Pakistan are the second largest religious group after the Sunni Muslims but have been persecuted as target of endless violence resulting in several thousand deaths. The genocide of Shia continues unabated while the state institutions have completely failed to protect them or provide justice while the killers roam free. According to the reports in the city of Karachi between the 1992- 2005 seventy Shia doctors were killed. In total, nearly 200 Shia doctors have been killed while other professionals killed include lawyers, academics and educationists.
The 2012 Annual report published by Global Human Rights Defense on Pakistan states that:
So far in Pakistan more than 10,000 Shias have been killed (in direct attacks only). In Parachinar valley more than 4000 Shias were killed. People are pulled down from the buses, their identity cards are checked, their names are different than the Sunni names [so they are easily identified] and they get killed and raped; women have been threaten and molested. The reason why these things are happening I believe is not a sectarian (two-way) issue.
Now what is the future of Shia in Pakistan??
Mein kis k hath mein apna lahu talaash karun
Tamam sher ny pehny howy hain daastany
Mustafa Zaidi