No answers for Peshawar school massacre parents
Nine extremists had scaled walls of an army-run school, lobbed grenades and opened fire during the attack
Peshawar’s parents are seeking retribution: not only from the Taliban gunmen who slaughtered their children one year ago, but from a state they say has not yet answered for the nightmare they are still living.
The massacre saw nine extremists scale the walls of an army-run school in the northwestern Pakistani city, lobbing grenades and opening fire on terrified children and teachers, murdering them one by one before being killed by security services.
Many of the mothers and fathers of more than 130 children murdered in the December 16 attack are ethnic Pashtun, their lives infused with the tribal code of ethics of which badla — or revenge — is a cornerstone.
As such they take grim satisfaction in knowing that the military has wreaked its vengeance on the insurgents with hangings, arrests, and an offensive in the tribal areas where militants had previously operated with impunity.
But the same parents are railing against a deafening silence from authorities over how a security apparatus put in place to protect them could have failed their children so completely.
“At least someone at some level was responsible ... Why don’t they talk about it?” asks Abid Raza Bangash, whose 15-year-old son Rafiq was among those slaughtered. The assault — in which 134 children and 17 adults died, according to the army — shocked and outraged Pakistanis, already scarred by nearly a decade of attacks, and prompted a crackdown on extremism in civil society.
But no government, security or military official has yet been held to public account.
Bangash left his job as an engineer to become head of the Shuhada (Martyrs) Forum, a lobbying group of parents of the victims who gather on the 16th of every month in the city’s cultural centre, Nishtar Hall.
“We want a fact-finding inquiry commission headed by a senior judge to probe this incident. The findings of that commission should be made public,” he said.
In August, after a military trial that took place behind closed doors, the army announced that six militants linked to the Peshawar assault would be executed, while a seventh was given a life sentence.
On December 2, four were hanged at dawn in a prison in the northwestern city of Kohat, enraging parents who wanted to witness their deaths.
“All the nation wanted to see these animals hanged publicly so others would not dare follow their example,” Bangash said.