On 8 November 2004, a 21-year-old philosophy student at the University of Karachi had just finished a radio broadcast on the famous poet Joan Elia when he was abducted from the downtown building. His tortured and mutilated body was found at its boundary wall two days later, November 10. It was taken to the Jinnah Post Graduate Hospital, a government facility, for autopsy. But the doctor–already informed that the killing had been ordered by powerful and influential persons–refused to do his job. After waiting outside in the hot sun for three hours, the young man’s parents were forced to take the body away for funeral rites, without a post mortem as required by law.
Faraz Ahmed was murdered and denied his last legal right–a medical examination to determine the causes of his death and identify clues that may lead to the arrest of the perpetrators–because his father, Baseer Naveed, was leading local people to make their voices heard by the government and army officials backing the massive Lyari Expressway project. The expressway planners and their associates resented Baseer for his work, but knew also that he would not be deterred by threats against his own life. So instead they made his son their target. Even this was not enough: other members of Baseer’s family too were attacked in public, until finally he had no choice but to move them to safety far from their hometown.
Meanwhile, in the two years since Faraz was murdered, and despite repeated calls from many quarters, neither the police nor other government officials have shown any interest in the case. No forensic examinations of either the crime scene or the victim’s clothes and other belongings have ever been conducted. The authorities have not even shown the basic human decency of returning the belongings recovered from Faraz’s schoolbag and pockets to his family. Rather, the police simply recorded a few statements and then started their routine methods of trying to extract money from parties to the case. Every time they have been pressed hard on the lack of progress, senior officers have changed the investigator and said that the new one would handle the case better. And so it goes on.
The judiciary also has been complicit. The case has never gone to court. The judicial magistrate in the locality of Ferozabad Police Station, where the murder occurred, has the authority to order that the police bring something before him. He has never bothered.
Attempts at imposing discipline or punishment have been no more than cruel jokes. Shortly after the killing, the governor of Sindh instructed the provincial police surgeon to investigate why a post mortem was never conducted as required by law. After two years, nobody has ever come up with a report, and apparently no one cares. In December 2004, the advisor on health to the Chief Minister of Sindh ordered that the doctor who refused to conduct the autopsy be suspended from service. After one week, the order was revoked and the doctor transferred to another city. Some six months later, he had his old job back.
Today the Asian Human Rights Commission remembers the life of a young man, a young humanist, peace activist and poet, whose life was taken from him ruthlessly and far too soon. Faraz Ahmed was a victim of a morally bankrupt and institutionally corrupt administration. He was the victim twice: once upon death, and once after death, when those persons responsible for killing him were also capable of ensuring that the country’s medical, investigative and judicial bodies all failed to respond to the gross injustice signified by his lifeless body.
On the second anniversary of the murder of Faraz Ahmed, the Asian Human Rights Commission again calls for justice. In calling for justice for Faraz, it is calling for justice not only for him. It is calling for justice for the countless others like him in Pakistan made victims of power, influence and systemic impunity. In calling for justice for Faraz, it is calling for the upholding of basic human decency in the hospitals, police stations, government departments and courts of Pakistan. If the life of this one can be vindicated and celebrated, then perhaps the same can be done for others. If this much can not be done, then what can we say of the institutions and society of Pakistan today?
