The writer is a member of staff.

THE airwaves, the print media, every chaikhana and drawing room and workshop are overflowing with analysis and speculation about what the July 25 election means for the country.

Will the new rulers finally manage to bring about the change so obviously and desperately wanted by millions of citizens? Or will it all prove to be a chimera, in the way that Greek mythology describes it?

With such a surfeit of election-related news, many instances of brutal reality have dropped off the radar after having been briefly taken up. One of them pertained to a ‘hero’ who died two days before the new Pakistan appeared on the electoral map. His death was inevitable, but there are few who will mourn or even remember him. So here goes — the print media ought to carry a warning for disturbing and/or graphic content too.

Ten days before the elections were scheduled to be held, when the emotions of party activists and their unruliness ran high, the Ayesha Chundrigar Foundation (ACF) for animal welfare received a call about a severely injured donkey that had been found in Karachi’s Gulshan-i-Iqbal area.

The trembling, traumatised soul was taken in by horrified animal rescuers.

The beast was found in a condition so distressing that the people at the ACF put the facts up on social media. Hero, as he came to be named, had been severely beaten, punched and kicked in the face and abdomen, and blood was flowing freely. His snout had been broken, his nostrils ripped apart, and his body bore evidence of rope marks and a car having been rammed into him.

The trembling, traumatised soul was taken in by the horrified animal rescuers, and he was provided all possible medical treatment. But the injuries were so severe, so unthinkably brutal, that it proved impossible for Hero to survive.

Why? “This is a hate crime,” the ACF said on the internet. “We have blurred out the names on the donkey’s body as we will not involve ourselves in this mess. The rest is up to you all to decide.”

Indeed. I believe I may not name names here either, but it seems that some supporters of a political party had used the animal to try and set an example for their opponents, after their leader called people supporting the rival party gadhas or asses. This was evident from the names that had been written over the beast’s coat.

Of course, a political party cannot really be blamed for the revolting actions taken by those who appeared to be its supporters. But once the crime has occurred, it can certainly come out strongly in defence of the rights of all living things and reject the brutal actions witnessed. Unfortunately, in this case, only a roundabout statement was released on social media amounting to a ‘now, now, don’t be bad’ sort of reprimand for whoever was responsible for poor Hero’s pitiful condition.

But this was hardly an aberration. Animal abuse is, unfortunately, rife all over the country; even as a detestable political message or imagery, it has happened before and will happen again. A few days after Hero was found, another tortured animal was given into the care of the ACF. This donkey, too, had been pelted with stones and beaten around the head with jagged objects; his skull was stripped to the bone, and one eye had been gouged out.

Around the same time, a video started circulating amongst outraged animal rights defenders showing a dog, wrapped in the flag of a political party and then shot. And let us not forget the white tigress that, in the run-up to the 2013 elections, was paraded across town by another political party desirous of drumming up support at its rallies through the gross display of a powerful creature brought to its knees, signifying no doubt the party’s power.

It matters not that this was a beast meant to run in the wild, one of nature’s most sophisticated breathing machines; no, it had to be put in a cage to be jeered at by sophisticated savages, just as Africans were once exhibited in colonial England.

It is a sad reflection on the soul of a society when its greatest targets for causing pain and misery are those who cannot fight back, who have no voice.

This is a well-known trope regarding human rights, of course, where the abuse of the vulnerable — from children to women to the poor to the undereducated — is par for the course. Some might be tempted to argue that we have to sort out these egregious violations first, before animals can be appended to the long list of beings who need saving.

True, but conversely, compassion cannot be selectively hoped for as a characteristic of society. It’s either all, or nothing. And society in new Pakistan, it would appear, has in this regard nothing much in great quantities.

The writer is a member of staff.

hajrahmumtaz@gmail.com

Published in Dawn, July 30th, 2018