In Pakistan and beyond, crime has its ripple effects
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The story of civilizational progress has often been written in blood. For example, the United Nations only came into being after two world wars obliterated millions of lives. Likewise, global laws against genocide, war crimes and human rights abuses were codified only after humanity had committed some unspeakable atrocities.
On the level of nation-states, it was incidents of shocking violence that finally compelled societies to confront their failures. The Christchurch Mosque shootings in New Zealand led to a sweeping ban on semi-automatic weapons within weeks. In the UK, the 2021 murder of Sarah Everard by a police officer triggered a reckoning on misogyny within law enforcement and pushed the authorities to introduce stricter safety measures for women. In the United States, the murder of George Floyd led to some police reforms, while the Nirbhaya case in India reshaped the country’s sexual violence laws.
At the same time, it must be pointed out that there were some equally shocking incidents that could not trigger any meaningful change. The suspicious death of Uwais Omotere in the Nigerian police’s custody, and the fatal shooting of teenager Nahel Merzouk by French police during a traffic stop both triggered protests but precipitated very little structural change. What, then, determines whether an incident may force lasting reforms or fade into oblivion? And is it really necessary for societies to bleed before they heal?
The Pakistani justice system, like others, has struggled to find a path between reactionary measures and prolonged inertia. We have seen some change after grave tragedies, but not always. For example, seven-year-old Zainab Ansari’s brutal rape and murder in 2018 led to some swift amendments in child protection laws. However, thousands of similar cases were hushed up.
What, then, determines whether an incident may force lasting reforms or fade into oblivion? And is it really necessary for societies to bleed before they heal?
Syed Kaleem Imam
The Army Public School Peshawar attack in 2014, which claimed 150 lives, led to the creation of the National Action Plan (NAP) as well as a military offensive against militants, thus far nearly a decade later, terrorism continues to evolve, shifting from large-scale attacks to targeted killings and insurgencies in KP and Balochistan, exposing the limitations of reactive policies.
These were headline cases: there is also another, very long list of tragedies that sparked outrage but no meaningful change. Over 250 factory workers were burned alive by Karachi’s criminal mafias over an alleged extortion dispute in the Baldia Town factory case. The convoluted legal proceedings and political interference have turned these cases into cautionary tales of how impunity persists despite overwhelming evidence.
In 2014, police opened fire on unarmed political protesters in Lahore’s Model Town; they, too, were never brought to justice despite multiple commissions of inquiry. Similarly, counterterrorism officers gunned down a family during a botched intelligence operation in Sahiwal in 2019. The incident highlighted police brutality, but never precipitated any meaningful reforms.
And who can forget the shocking murder of Parveen Rehman, the social activist who exposed Karachi’s land mafia? It remains a stark reminder of how Pakistan treats those who stand up for the weak. Despite years of investigations and multiple arrests, the masterminds remain shielded by the very networks she sought to expose.
There has been no change in our culture of gender-based violence even though Sarah Inam’s murder in 2022 and Noor Mukadam’s brutal killing in 2021 ignited much public outrage. The conviction rate for domestic violence and honor killings remains dismally low. The Anti-Honor Killing Law of 2016 was hailed as a milestone, but loopholes within laws still provide perpetrators with an easy escape.
Even those who can afford security are not safe when the system refuses to protect them, as the recent murder of Mustafa Amir in Karachi has shown. On that note, Karachi remains unsafe for ordinary citizens, with dumper trucks killing pedestrians on a daily basis and street crime growing unchecked. The desperate are robbing the struggling and the system has no answers.
Pakistan’s political history, too, has been marked by grave crimes that ought to have changed the course of justice — until now many remain unresolved. Two prime ministers, Liaquat Ali Khan and Benazir Bhutto, were assassinated in public, but their killers were never brought to justice- General Zia’s plane crash remains an unresolved mystery. Not only that, but the threat of political violence also continued to persist, as underscored by the 2008 attack on former prime minister Yousaf Raza Gilani’s convoy as well as the attempted assassination of yet another former prime minister, Imran Khan, in 2022.
A study published in the Oxford Criminology Review in 2021, pertaining to delayed justice in South Asia, highlights how high-profile cases are often turned into “public spectacles rather than catalysts for real reform.” Our justice system, in particular, seems to exemplify this. We see outrage erupt, statements issued, committees formed, and then… silence. Such reactionary measures, shorn of any long-term planning or vision, allow the cycle of violence to continue spinning, to repeat history because we have simply refused to learn from it.
Must Pakistan wait for bigger heartbreaks before it finally decides to change, or can it proactively transition toward better governance and fairness? History proves that justice is never automatically earned — it must be demanded, defended, and institutionalized. Thus far, however, the pattern seems distressingly predictable for us. In the absence of structural reforms, each crisis will fade into the background, to be replaced by the next. The choice remains— will we strengthen our response before the next crime compels action, or let inertia prevail until another disaster rewrites our laws.
-The writer is former federal secretary/IGP- PhD in Politics and IR-teaching Law and Philosophy at Universities. He tweets @Kaleemimam. Email:[email protected]: fb@syedkaleemimam
