fiction~dreamer.●๋•
to remember once more
~ Today marks what would have been Benazir Bhutto's 56th birthday, 21st June 2009.
The enquiry into her murder was launched on 20th June by her husband, the current President of Pakistan, Asif Ali Zardari. We remember her life, her struggle - which people tend to ignore, others who dismiss her long years of imprisonment, how many others have lived such a life?? Her fall from grace, and her return to Pakistan, a country she had vowed never to leave, 'Pakistan is our homeland, that's where we'll live, and that's where we'll die' [Note *1], as she stated upon arrival in London after 7 years of imprisonment and state harassment by Gen. Zia's martial law regime.
Benazir was galvanised by her father's treatment by the martial law regime, and he looked to her to continue on his path: 'My daughter, should anything happen to me, promise me, you will continue my mission.' He extracted this promise from her in his death cell.
How unfortunate that she should have ended up with a man who reversed all the goodwill she had earned during her years of struggle. The man chosen for her to marry, Asif Ali Zardari, is notorious in Pakistan, and various courts of law worldwide - due to the numerous cases against him - as a fraudster and embezzler of government funds, indeed he is one of the richest men in Pakistan, one of a handful of billionaires - but how did he earn it?? He spent 8 years in jail after the fall of his wife's goverment in 1997. He is also accused of stage managing Benazir's brother's death, Mir Murtaza Bhutto, in 1997. The current rue against him is that he was implicit in his wife's murder. He stated at her death that he knew who the murderers were and would expose their names. He has yet to expose them.
The lioness who stood up and fought the military regime who killed her father, not stopping despite threat to her personal safety, was made and unmade by men, her father and her husband.
Her daughter, Bakhtawar, wrote a rap song to mourn the loss of her mother's life, 'what point of all your struggle? What point of your death?'
My point is, that in a country such as Pakistan, where women and men live completely different lives, and live in a segregated world, a women such as Benazir Bhutto, with all the wealth and privilege that came to her at birth, she lived a fearless life, and stood up to fight. I would like you you to consider people such as Mustafa Khar, the infamous vile character portrayed by Tehmina Durrani, one of his six ex-wives in her memoir, My Feudal Lord, who negotiated his escape and exile from Pakistan, and who has slithered around the political map of Pakistan to achieve maximum benefit, is also a billionaire, and still casting his net in the political waters. Where was that 'Sher-e-Punjab' when his political mentor and friend needed support? He had sneaked away like a little frightened kitten! What if he, and countless others, had stayed and fought alongside those who were harassed and then killed at the behest of the military dictators, corrupt politicians and vile foreign powers, as
if they were game pieces in a deadly board game. This is why she is my heroine.
[Note *1 - BB to reporters at Heathrow Airport, London, after release from seven years of enprisonent and house arrest within Pakistan, January 1984.]
In the famous My Dearest Daughter, written by Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto to his daughter Benazir on her 25th birthday while he was in proison awaiting excution, in 1978, her father wrote:
My dearest daughter,
How does a condemned prisoner write a letter of birthday
greetings to a beautiful and brilliant daughter fighting for the life of her
father, being in bondage herself, knowing that her Mother is suffering
the same suffering as herself? It is more than a matter of
communication. How would the message of affection and sympathy
pass from one prison bar to the other, from one chain to the other?
...
I am fifty years old and you are exactly half my age. By the time
you reach my age, you must accomplish twice as much as I have
achieved for the people. Mir Ghulam Murtaza, my son and heir, is not
with me. Nor are Shah Nawaz and Sanam-Seema. This message has
to be shared with them as a part of my heritage. Mir Sain is a close
friend of the son of Robert Kennedy. That youthful leader of America
wrote:
“Every generation has its central concern, whether to end
war, erase racial injustice, or improve the condition of the working
man. Today’s young people appear to have chosen for their concern
the dignity of the individual human being, they demand a limitation
upon excessive power. They demand a government that speaks
directly and honestly to its citizens. The possibilities are too great, the
generation only the prophetic lament of Tennyson:
‘Ah, what shall I be at fifty, should nature keep me alive, if I
find the world so bitter, when I am but twenty-five?’”
Photo credit: Balkis Press/ABACA.
to remember once more
~ Today marks what would have been Benazir Bhutto's 56th birthday, 21st June 2009.
The enquiry into her murder was launched on 20th June by her husband, the current President of Pakistan, Asif Ali Zardari. We remember her life, her struggle - which people tend to ignore, others who dismiss her long years of imprisonment, how many others have lived such a life?? Her fall from grace, and her return to Pakistan, a country she had vowed never to leave, 'Pakistan is our homeland, that's where we'll live, and that's where we'll die' [Note *1], as she stated upon arrival in London after 7 years of imprisonment and state harassment by Gen. Zia's martial law regime.
Benazir was galvanised by her father's treatment by the martial law regime, and he looked to her to continue on his path: 'My daughter, should anything happen to me, promise me, you will continue my mission.' He extracted this promise from her in his death cell.
How unfortunate that she should have ended up with a man who reversed all the goodwill she had earned during her years of struggle. The man chosen for her to marry, Asif Ali Zardari, is notorious in Pakistan, and various courts of law worldwide - due to the numerous cases against him - as a fraudster and embezzler of government funds, indeed he is one of the richest men in Pakistan, one of a handful of billionaires - but how did he earn it?? He spent 8 years in jail after the fall of his wife's goverment in 1997. He is also accused of stage managing Benazir's brother's death, Mir Murtaza Bhutto, in 1997. The current rue against him is that he was implicit in his wife's murder. He stated at her death that he knew who the murderers were and would expose their names. He has yet to expose them.
The lioness who stood up and fought the military regime who killed her father, not stopping despite threat to her personal safety, was made and unmade by men, her father and her husband.
Her daughter, Bakhtawar, wrote a rap song to mourn the loss of her mother's life, 'what point of all your struggle? What point of your death?'
My point is, that in a country such as Pakistan, where women and men live completely different lives, and live in a segregated world, a women such as Benazir Bhutto, with all the wealth and privilege that came to her at birth, she lived a fearless life, and stood up to fight. I would like you you to consider people such as Mustafa Khar, the infamous vile character portrayed by Tehmina Durrani, one of his six ex-wives in her memoir, My Feudal Lord, who negotiated his escape and exile from Pakistan, and who has slithered around the political map of Pakistan to achieve maximum benefit, is also a billionaire, and still casting his net in the political waters. Where was that 'Sher-e-Punjab' when his political mentor and friend needed support? He had sneaked away like a little frightened kitten! What if he, and countless others, had stayed and fought alongside those who were harassed and then killed at the behest of the military dictators, corrupt politicians and vile foreign powers, as
if they were game pieces in a deadly board game. This is why she is my heroine.
[Note *1 - BB to reporters at Heathrow Airport, London, after release from seven years of enprisonent and house arrest within Pakistan, January 1984.]
In the famous My Dearest Daughter, written by Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto to his daughter Benazir on her 25th birthday while he was in proison awaiting excution, in 1978, her father wrote:
My dearest daughter,
How does a condemned prisoner write a letter of birthday
greetings to a beautiful and brilliant daughter fighting for the life of her
father, being in bondage herself, knowing that her Mother is suffering
the same suffering as herself? It is more than a matter of
communication. How would the message of affection and sympathy
pass from one prison bar to the other, from one chain to the other?
...
I am fifty years old and you are exactly half my age. By the time
you reach my age, you must accomplish twice as much as I have
achieved for the people. Mir Ghulam Murtaza, my son and heir, is not
with me. Nor are Shah Nawaz and Sanam-Seema. This message has
to be shared with them as a part of my heritage. Mir Sain is a close
friend of the son of Robert Kennedy. That youthful leader of America
wrote:
“Every generation has its central concern, whether to end
war, erase racial injustice, or improve the condition of the working
man. Today’s young people appear to have chosen for their concern
the dignity of the individual human being, they demand a limitation
upon excessive power. They demand a government that speaks
directly and honestly to its citizens. The possibilities are too great, the
generation only the prophetic lament of Tennyson:
‘Ah, what shall I be at fifty, should nature keep me alive, if I
find the world so bitter, when I am but twenty-five?’”
Photo credit: Balkis Press/ABACA.