This is apropos a Business Recorder op-ed "In cold blood" carried out by the newspaper yesterday. The writer, Rashed Rahman, has thrown ample light on the Sahiwal tragedy. He has plausibly argued, among other things, that "The first recipients of this lawless behaviour by our law enforcers in the early years and up to the 1980s were Leftists and progressives of all hues. They suffered arbitrary arrest and detention, torture and much worse through these decades. With the decline of the Left in the 1980s, and the incremental emergence of terrorism on our soil because of the misplaced use of religious fanatics as proxy warriors in the region, the police, CTD and the deep state have virtual carte blanche to act against and even use lethal force to eliminate suspected terrorists and alleged criminals without recourse to the law, courts, or due process. The Sahiwal tragedy is the bitter fruit of these trends".

His is a highly informed perspective on the history of brutalities and ecesses committed by law enforcement agencies and the deep state in the country. But the writer seems to have ignored a key point in this regard: the proponents of Maixism, Leninism, Statinism and Socialism in Pakistan had not acted responsibly much before the breakup of the them Soviet Union. They were committed advocates for internationalism, rights of the downtrodden, equality, believing that wealth and power should be shared between all parts of society, but they were often found to be fomenting political unrest in the country. The Left, since the rise of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in the late 1960s, has lost its true ideological moorings.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2019