His government has ordered the arrests of at least 30, including eight Rescue 1122 officials, and Waqar Chohan, a district police officer who allegedly oversaw the murders and claims that part of the footage featuring him is fabricated. Punjab’s chief minister, Shahbaz Sharif, and others have consoled the family on camera. Politicians are showing perfunctory bereavement. Vigilante killings, which have also occurred in India, speak of the frustration Pakistanis feel toward a corrupt police force, which has been known to resort to mob-style executions, and a seemingly well-intentioned but bogged-down or frightened judiciary. Most recently, eight alleged robbers were stoned and beaten to death in Toba Tek Singh this May. Seven such murders took place in a single week in May 2008. Such episodes of vigilantism are becoming frighteningly common.
That footage turned the tide of public opinion against the militants. The videos are far worse than the game-changing footage that appeared last year of the Taliban flogging a 16-year-old girl in Swat. The gory details of the killings have been highlighted, unvarnished, on private television channels demanding justice. The real motive may have been a more mundane dispute over use of community cricket grounds. The brothers-educated, middle class-were said to have been mistaken for armed robbers. The bodies were ritualistically paraded on a flatbed truck, and then strung up. The attackers included young children who threw stones and shoes at the brothers as they were dragged across the asphalt. A handful of policemen are seen standing by as the brothers are mercilessly beaten with sticks and steel rods-their pleas for quick death unheeded. Cellphone footage of the incident that has emerged is devastating.
Mughees Butt, 19, and Muneeb Butt, 15, were attacked by a mob of at least 50 shortly before 7 a.m. The killings have shocked and outraged Pakistan, and are now a critical test for the country’s embattled politicians and recently independent judiciary. A few hours later, the unrecognizably battered, bloodied, and lifeless bodies of both brothers were hanging upside down in front of emergency service Rescue 1122’s offices in Sialkot. They left their house after saying their morning prayers.
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