bolte kyuuñ nahīñ mire haq meñ

aable paḌ ga.e zabān meñ kyā

Why do you not speak in my favour

Has your tongue filled with blisters?

For over fifteen years, I have worked to highlight the plight of the abandoned Pakistanis of Bangladesh, often through my own writings. In that time, I have encountered patient editors and those who chose not to respond at all, rude readers and others who remained thoughtful, and above all, a ruling class that has remained consistently silent.

I have written before about the silence of our screens and the muteness of much of the media. Only recently has there been a faint shift, when a few journalists finally found the courage to report from the 4x4 camps where these communities still "live". But that is as far as it has gone.

At a time when even the mention of a martyred soldier can attract toxic commentary on social media, questions about loyalty and the obligations of the state feel more urgent than ever.

I write again today not because I believe this time will be different, but because the country around me has changed in ways that make this silence impossible to justify.

Pakistan is fighting on several fronts that are costing us blood and credibility. On the Afghan frontier, our soldiers are martyred in attacks launched from sanctuaries across a border we cannot freely cross.

In Balochistan's Musakhail and Turbat, on the roads between them, workers are pulled from buses and shot. Their crime, their killers say, is their ethnicity and their loyalty to the state. Meanwhile, in a Middle East in........

© The Express Tribune