ON February 1, just after the return to the
beloved homeland of our two world travelers,
President from the East, Prime Minister from the
West, the national press carried two stories,
both highly shaming to this republic and its
leadership.

On the morning of January 27 in the village of
Habib Labano, Ubauro, near Gotkhi in Sindh (some
500 km from Karachi), reportedly and allegedly, a
16-year old girl, Nasima, was grabbed by a group
of 11 men, taken away and gang-raped and then
forced to walk back to her home, through the
village streets, in a state of semi-nudity. The
story spread, as all such stories do after the
Mukhtaran Mai incident, and was picked up by a
foreign news agency. Various human rights
associations have been alerted and certain NGOs
have approached the Supreme Court requesting the
judges to take suo motu notice of this incident.
It was reported on the front page of two
publications of our national press on February 1.

In one publication, bang next to this front-paged
story headlined ’Girls raped, paraded naked in
Ubauro,’ was another headline ’Lovers stoned to
death in Multan village."

On January 28, a woman of Donga Bonga, Ellahi
Hussain, was accused by her family of having an
affair with a man, Hafeez Shah, from the same
village. Her murder was planned by her relatives.
The man and woman were dragged out of a house by
a gang bent on vengeance, ropes were bound around
their necks and they were tied to a couple of
trees. They were stoned to death by a
bloodthirsty mob which "smashed their heads with
stones and bricks." This act of sheer barbarism,
which took place in the ruling province of
enlightened Punjab, near the great and ancient
city of Multan, has also no doubt been picked up
by foreign news agencies.

We, the nation, are fully deserving of whatever
international odium and contempt is stirred by
these two disgraceful and truly shaming acts.
There are laws galore on the statute book which
provide for speedy arrests of all the culprits
concerned who should be put on trial for murder,
plain and simple murder in the first degree, and
awarded with as little delay as is legally
possible the ultimate punishment for their crimes.

But this will not happen. The question of
’honour’ killings will arise, the jirga system
will be brought into play, old feudal traditions
and customs will be evoked and it is quite
possible that these cold-blooded murderers amidst
us will go free - as so many have done before.

We then come to the question of the great triumph
of last year, the passage through parliament of
what is erroneously known as the Women’s
Protection Bill and its subsequent transition
into law. Where did this law come into play in
Ubauro and Donga Bonga? How did it protect Nasima
and Ellahi? How will it protect hundreds, maybe
thousands, of other young girls and women who
will succumb to the mores of the Pakistani jungle
and to the national mindset present in the vast
majority of the illiterate, poverty-stricken
160-plus millions of this land and the few
thousand wicked feudals who keep them firmly
where they are?

Yesterday, Dawn carried a story datelined
Gujranwala, February 2, relating how "students
torture to death bus checker." A bus on its way
from Lahore to Gujrat was halted when the GT road
was blocked by students (of what?). They
“forcibly boarded the bus” and when the ticket
cheeker asked them for their tickets they beat
him to death. Charming.

A far more gory tale was also carried yesterday
by another daily publication under the headline a
"28-year old was castrated with a broken tea
cup." Huzoor Baksh Malik of Larkana who was about
to be married - he "was awarded a girl by a jirga
in compensation for his mother’s murder ten years
ago." That in itself is grossly wrong. On January
21, his employer, one Tonio, accused him of theft
and he was handed over to the police and locked
up. On January 24 Tonio and some friends arrived
at the police station, asked Malik to admit to
his crime, and when he refused they "castrated
him with a broken tea cup." What comment can
possibly be made?

Back to the nation’s physical health (having
dealt with just the tip of its mental
aberrations) on which I wrote two weeks ago
quoting from a report authored by Dr Jamsheer
Talati who has yet to be contacted by our
’proactive’ health minister who has more
important matters on which to focus than the
nation’s health problems.

Why he was appointed health minister is anyone’s
guess as he is obviously incapable of advising or
guiding his boss, Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz,
when it comes to matters of health. On January 24
a news item in this newspaper informed us that Mr 
Aziz, indulging in one of his favourite pastimes,
performed the “groundbreaking ceremony” of a
“Rs.2 billion medical complex for the elite,” in
Islamabad, the "first of two elitist medical
towers" (14-storey) to be built. The second one
(13-storey) is destined to go up and up on the
premises of Karachi’s Jinnah Postgraduate Medical
Centre at a cost of Rs.3.4 billion. This is a
gross and criminal misplacement of priorities and
someone should have so advised the prime minister.

With the divide between the haves and have-nots
growing wider by the day, such hare-brained
schemes are not what the nation needs. Karachi
has to its credit a couple of newly developed and
tested models of public private partnerships,
conceived and built for the people, poor and
rich, without wasting public or private money.
Both are situated in the JPMC, and the motivating
force behind them was Professor Dr Hasan Aziz.

The Accident and Emergency Foundation (cost Rs.30
million - various philanthropists of Karachi) is
equipped with two operation theatre suites with
state of the art stand alone facilities. It has
its own medical supplies, instruments, equipment,
round-the-clock theatre managers, and outsourcing
security, sanitation and civil works maintenance.
It has been in commission for almost three years
during which 5,000 emergency surgeries have been
performed without one single patient being
charged one single rupee. Because of its
excellence, it is often the chosen venue for
visiting surgical specialists to hold special
skills workshops and teleworkshops. Donations
continue to flow in from private sources without
having to hold a mass of fund-raising functions.

Then there are the model labour rooms and
gynae-surgical theatres, planned by a group of
health workers and concerned laypeople, and
adopted by the Marium Ali Mohammad Tabba
Foundation which runs and manages the complex
entirely from Tabba family funds. The complex is
contained in a two-storey building, a state of
the art facility with all equipment required for
obstetric care plus five operation theatres for
surgical cases. The complex can deal with over
12,000 deliveries per year and with over 6,000
surgical patients per year.

The Tabba Foundation provides maintenance,
medication, repairs and replacement of equipment
and all machinery, and it provides the management
to run the complex.

Suggestion : Next time the prime minister visits
Karachi, he should take a break from his run of
the mill inaugurations and foundation stone
laying ceremonies, and with the two monstrous
’elitist’ medical towers in mind, pay a visit to
the JPMC and see for himself what can be done for
the people, the awam so beloved of our
politicians, at a reasonable cost when the
private and public sectors cooperate
meaningfully, practically and with good intent.
He can always bring along the health minister in
tow.