KARACHI: Thousands of mourners visited the shrine of former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto Wednesday as the country marked 10 years since her assassination, with her killers yet to face justice.
An estimated 20,000 people gathered at the shrine in Garhi Khuda Baksh in the Bhutto family stronghold of Sindh province, television images showed.
They came to pay their respects to the charismatic politician, who was the first woman to lead a Muslim country and a darling of the West.
“I feel we have become orphans after her martyrdom,” mourner Allah Varayo, 45, told AFP by telephone from the shrine. Others waved flags in the black, red and green of Bhutto’s Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) as well as photographs of the slain leader.
“I could see more vigour among the people, who have come in larger numbers than the previous years,” said Ahsan Junejo, a resident of the Bhutto’s home town Larkana near the shrine.
Bhutto, a two-time prime minister, was contesting a third election when she was assassinated in a gun and suicide attack at a rally in Rawalpindi on Dec. 27, 2007.
Her death plunged Pakistan into political uncertainty and street violence and shocked the world.
Former president and military ruler Pervez Musharraf is alleged to have been part of a broad conspiracy to have Bhutto, his political rival, killed before elections.
He has been charged with the murder but has denied the allegation, and remains in self-imposed exile in Dubai. Earlier this year a Pakistani court declared him a “fugitive” in the case.
“Murderer, murderer, Musharraf, murderer!” Bhutto’s son Bilawal, chairman of the PPP, chanted along with the crowd at the shrine Wednesday, an unusual expression of mass defiance against the military.
Musharraf’s government blamed the assassination on Pakistani Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud, who denied any involvement. He was killed in a US drone attack in 2009.
In 2010 a UN report accused Musharraf’s government of failing to give Bhutto adequate protection and said her death could have been prevented.
To this day just two people have been convicted of the assassination — policemen accused of “mishandling” the crime scene.
Five alleged militants accused of being involved in the killing were cleared earlier this year, though they remain behind bars for now.
The unanswered questions surrounding the assassination have prompted a flood of conspiracy theories.
“There are theories only, and even after 10 years we don’t know who was behind the murder,” Muqtida Mansoor, a political analyst, told AFP.
Pakistan grieves Benazir Bhutto, 10 years after assassination
Pakistan grieves Benazir Bhutto, 10 years after assassination
Archbishop of York says he was ‘intimidated’ by Israeli militias during West Bank visit
- “We were … intimidated by Israeli militias who told us that we couldn’t visit Palestinian families in the occupied West Bank,” the archbishop said
LONDON: The Archbishop of York has revealed that he felt “intimidated” by Israeli militias during a visit to the Holy Land this year.
“We were stopped at various checkpoints and intimidated by Israeli militias who told us that we couldn’t visit Palestinian families in the occupied West Bank,” the Rev. Stephen Cottrell told his Christmas Day congregation at York Minster.
The archbishop added: “We have become — and really, I can think of no other way of putting it — we have become fearful of each other, and especially fearful of strangers, or just people who aren’t quite like us.
“We don’t seem to be able to see ourselves in them, and therefore we spurn our common humanity.”
He recounted how YMCA charity representatives in Bethlehem, who work with persecuted Palestinian communities in the West Bank, gave him an olive wood Nativity scene carving.
The carving depicted a “large gray wall” blocking the three kings from getting to the stable to see Mary, Joseph and Jesus, he said.
He said it was sobering for him to see the wall in real life during his visit.
He continued: “But this Christmas morning here in York, as well as thinking about the walls that divide and separate the Holy Land, I’m also thinking of all the walls and barriers we erect across the whole of the world and, perhaps most alarming, the ones we build around ourselves, the ones we construct in our hearts and minds, and of how our fearful shielding of ourselves from strangers — the strangers we encounter in the homeless on our streets, refugees seeking asylum, young people starved of opportunity and growing up without hope for the future — means that we are in danger of failing to welcome Christ when he comes.”
