A diet of horror, over and over again
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Some stories capture the public imagination while others – equally horrific – barely register as blips on the radars of our collective consciousness and conscience.
A few weeks back, an online media portal reported that a gang in the eastern Pakistani district of Pakpattan was molesting schoolboys in the basement of a medical dispensary and videotaping the abuse in order to blackmail them. This crime came to light when one of the victims, a boy named Qurban (not his real name) was accosted by the criminals while going to the market with his mother. Suspecting that something was very wrong, his mother pressed him to tell her what had happened. She went to the police, who duly arrested four of the perpetrators and learned that SIM cards containing videos of the abuse had been circulating around their small town for weeks. This was because the criminals, not content with extorting money from their young victims, had also decided to make a few extra bucks by selling videos of their crimes.
Does this sound familiar? If so, that is because this is almost exactly like the atrocity that unfolded in the village of Hussain Khanwala in Kasur in 2015. The details had emerged slowly, like a mass grave excavated one spadeful of soiled earth at a time, layer by sordid layer.
Then too, a gang of criminals had preyed upon the children, mostly boys, of a small community. The gang made explicit videos of this abuse, and these videos were then used to blackmail the victims into committing petty crimes, with the abusers taking the proceeds. Worse still, the victims were forced to bring other children into the net, and making them complicit in the abuse of others. It was a pyramid scheme of evil incarnate. Does that sound like hyperbole? It is not. During the course of investigating this story, I myself have seen some of the videos that circulated in that village and even now, seven years later, I can still see the faces of those children when I close my eyes.
During the course of investigating this story, I myself have seen some of the videos that circulated in that village and even now, seven years later, I can still see the faces of those children when I close my eyes.
Zarrar Khuhro
Once the story broke, there was mass outrage and the entirety of Pakistan’s media descended on this diseased town to probe and prod the midden heap. World media quickly followed.
For weeks and months, this was all anyone could talk about until, as is inevitable, the reporters and camera crews left, as did the NGOs who had followed in their wake. Having taken ‘notice’ and arrested a few of the perpetrators, the authorities breathed a sigh of relief that the focus had finally shifted. Everyone moved on, save for the victims and their families.
One of the survivors, Ali (not his real name) contacted me some weeks back. He, along with other survivors and their families, had long since left their homes in Hussain Khanwala, driven out not just by the taunts of their neighbours but by threats from their abusers themselves, their families and supporters, most of whom still enjoy influence, power and political connections.
As for Ali, he and his family shifted from town to town while having to lie to people when they ask him where he is from; because when they find out the truth, they want to know details, not from a place of empathy, but a sick voyeurism.
It was a fate foretold: in 2018, the forlorn victims, aware that the case was fading from the public imagination and that their abusers had more reach and resources than they did, staged a lonely protest at Liberty Chowk in Lahore. Many of them, like Ali, had to hide their faces behind scarves or placards, aware that society liked nothing better than to blame the victim. They stood in the cold, crying for attention that was never really given. In stark contrast to the coverage of the 2015 case, this protest barely made the headlines.
But there was a dark prophecy made that day, one that I remember distinctly. A father of one of the victims predicted that if their pleas were not heard and if justice was not done, the cycle of abuse would simply repeat itself again and again. To our eternal shame and regret, that unnamed father was right. Just ask the children of Pakpattan.
This protest took place soon after the rape and murder of little Zainab in Kasur, when a photo of her in a puffy pink jacket went viral and finally spurred the somnolent authorities into taking action. But nobody knows that 12 other girls were killed in exactly the same way before Zainab’s murder captured the public imagination.
Why is it then that some horrors move us to action while others do not? Have we become inured to atrocity? Have we in fact accepted a degree of horror in our daily lives? Or are we just content to rage for a short while and then tell ourselves the comforting lies we trot out on such occasions-- that it will never happen again. Until, of course, it does.
- Zarrar Khuhro is a Pakistani journalist who has worked extensively in both the print and electronic media industry. He is currently hosting a talk show on Dawn News. Twitter: @ZarrarKhuhro
