The
tale of the Chinese and the Pakistani Police
MAY
9, 2018
Khanewal is one of those places very few
people in Pakistan have visited. It is familiar only to those who travel by
rail from Karachi to Lahore and beyond. One notable person it has produced is
the famous religious scholar Maulana Tariq Jamil, whose sermons are very
popular among the people. He has been able to make a few celebrities turn into
deeply religious Muslims. He is also very popular among those worthy citizens
who have huge undeclared properties abroad and for whose benefit the recent tax
amnesty has been announced.
Many years ago, perhaps in 1965, a couple of
Pakistanis got into a scuffle with a British national in Karachi. One of the
locals said something about the Brit being an educated man who should refrain
from jumping the queue, to which the Brit said something abusive.
The two Pakistanis reacted and started beating
up the white man, while his wife sat screaming in their car. A crowd gathered
and succeeded in rescuing the Englishman. At the time, I thought the locals
should not have reacted so violently. Most of those assembled there, however
supported the locals. Unfortunately this is the way our people have been
brought up.
What does this incident have to do with
Khanewal? Recently local cops were involved in a clash with Chinese workers who
were building a road in the area. It seemed as if the Chinese wanted to go away
from their quarters but the police insisted on accompanying them. This,
according to the cops, was because they were responsible for the security of
the Chinese workers.
It remains unclear who started the fight. The
police say the Chinese attacked them, and they had no choice but to retaliate.
One Chinese man is seen standing on a police mobile van in a video. Another
video shows the Chinese workers being thrashed by the cops. I cannot say who is
to blame, but it is abundantly clear that our cops are not equipped to deal
with these situations.
In fact, policemen should not be given the
task of protecting the Chinese. If there is one thing we know for sure, it is
that our policemen are absolutely useless in maintaining law and order. The
courts have asked the government to arrest Khadim Hussain Rizvi, and the man is
roaming freely nowadays in Lahore, yet the police dare not approach him.
Compare this with what happened on March 25,
1971, when army personnel drove through the streets of Dacca which were packed
with hostile crowds and arrested Sheikh Mujeebur Rahman from his residence.
Only military personnel could have
successfully dealt with the Chinese, without any violence occurring. Policemen
in Pakistan are usually workers of political parties and in many cases they
have paid the right people to get jobs. In Karachi, due to the failure of the
police to control street crimes, the task has been given to the Rangers. Our
cops spend their working lives extracting money from poor helpless people so
they can collect enough to get posted to more lucrative places where they can
make even more money.
As expected, almost
everyone in the country blamed the Chinese. Here are some comments from online
newspaper readers.
“This is atrocious.
Pakistani policemen being beaten up by the Chinese engineers only because they
were stopped for security reasons. Will Chinese do such a thing in their own
country? They will kick army men also tomorrow. Only because Pakistan is
allowing them to build CPEC on their own land, China should not treat local
Pakistani as their slaves. Pakistani junta must protest this behavior with a
heavy hand or tomorrow Chinese will start treating Pakistan as their
captured country”
Here is another one:
“Chinese workers that
did this must be immediately repatriated back to China. We have a duty to safe
guard our people and police services. The Chinese should either stay
subservient to the local law or be thrown out. This is exactly what any other
self-respecting country would do. No one can come to our country and beat up
our people, as a mob, irrespective of who started it.”
Of course, we should
have expected the ending. Khanewal District Police Officer (DPO) Rizwan Umar
Gondal, a day after the clash between staff of a Chinese company and the
Special Protection Unit of police, recommended to the Punjab government
deportation of five officials including the country project manager of the
foreign company. Even though the Chinese workers apologised, they were still
deported.
There is, however,
more to this story. Everyone seems to have missed this report: “According to
police officials, Chinese engineers and other officials wanted to leave their
camp in Khanewal and visit a “red-light” area on
Tuesday night. They resorted to agitation when denied permission to leave
the camp without being accompanied by security officials.”
A red-light area? In
the Islamic Republic of Pakistan? And in the very place where Maulana Tariq
Jamil was born? We know what happens in such red light areas, and we can say
with certainty that the Chinese did not want to go there to play games like
Scrabble or Ludo or Monopoly with the good women there.
We also know that in
almost all cities such areas exist where people indulge in what is known as the
oldest profession in the world. But this fact is never mentioned, especially by
policemen, who pay huge sums to get posted to such localities to earn their
fortunes.
Again, if the DPO and
other police officers had ensured that no red light area existed in their
jurisdiction, the Chinese would never have heard of the place and the scuffle
would never have taken place.
So the government of
Shehbaz Sharif should first sack the DPO and other police officers for this
gross negligence. If he does not, perhaps the Chief Justice can take suo moto
notice and do what is required.
https://dailytimes.com.pk/237840/the-tale-of-the-chinese-and-the-pakistani-police/
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