Staff Reporter
Karachi—Children of late Mir Murtaza Bhutto, Miss Fatima Bhutto and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto Junior have written a letter to Chief Justice of Pakistan, Mr Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Choudhary, seeking his help for journey back home of Mohtarma Nusrat Bhutto, their grandma and widow of late Mr Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.
Following is the full text of the letter the two young Bhuttos wrote to the CJP.
Mr. Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhary
Chief Justice of Pakistan
Sir,
1.My name is Fatima Bhutto and I am the daughter of the late Mir Murtaza Bhutto. I write this letter for myself and on behalf of my younger brother Zulfikar Ali Bhutto Junior. I do very much hope you will be able to help us in our quest to be reunited with our grandmother, Nusrat Bhutto.
2.Our grandmother lived with us in Karachi at 70 Clifton. On September 27, 1996, one week after my father was assassinated by the State’s security forces outside our house, my aunt came to take her mother for what she promised would be a short trip to New York to attend the United Nations General Assembly session. I argued with my now late aunt that it was not safe for my grandmother to be unsettled as she had begun only recently to suffer the decline of Alzheimer’s and my father’s murder had strongly traumatized her. I asked my aunt for her to allow our grandmother to remain where she was, with us, in the home that she had lived in since her marriage to Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, so that she may grieve and heal in peace. My aunt refused and took our grandmother to New York. That was the last time we saw our grandmother.
3.We were allowed a 45 minute visit one year later in Islamabad on the condition, imposed by my aunt prior to permitting us to visit our grandmother, that our mother, Ghinwa, should not accompany us. When my brother and I saw our grandmother in Islamabad, we were distressed to see that our grandmother was being cared for by maids and servants, who fed her pills and various medicines whenever she became even slightly lucid. When she cried, as I cried over our separation, a maid appeared with more small white pills for her to ingest. The effect of the pills was to make her virtually comatose. It was a harrowing experience for my brother and I who grew up with our grandmother who we looked after when she lived with us, along with my mother and father to see our grandmother in such a neglected and abused mental and physical state.
4.During the 1996-97 elections my grandmother was paraded around Larkana and made by a handler to wave to passing crowds as her now late daughter Benazir had field nomination papers for my grandmother to contest the elections from NA 204, Larkana. It is pertinent to point out that my grandmother was pitched as a contestant against my mother so that after my father’s assassination his wife would have no power to question those state forces who had ordered the killing of the son of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and himself an elected member of parliament. Recently, Justice has once again been denied in the case of our father’s assassination when the sessions court of Karachi acquitted all the killers of our father, all of whom police officers and political figures alike are currently serving in the highest posts in the country.
5.After the elections, during which my grandmother was only seen and never heard, my aunt moved her to Dubai. We were not permitted to see our grandmother, no matter how frequent our requests and how desperate our longing. We travelled to Dubai in the spring of 1997 so that we might see our grandmother. We spent four days in a hotel sitting by the phone calling hourly to try and schedule an appointment. We left the UAE only when we were told that our grandmother had been moved to London so that she was in no danger of being met by my brother and me, both minor at the time.
6.I tried through various means by pleading with my aunt, by calling her ADC and office, by asking acquaintances who consistently refused to allow me contact with my grandmother.
7.As you are aware, since my aunt’s assassination in 2007, my grandmother has been unseen or unheard in Pakistan or anywhere else. Her only other surviving child, Sanam Bhutto resides in London and has no interest in providing the care and love her mother needs at least she has not demonstrated any inclination towards her mother, not during her able bodied life or now, during her old age. She is also unfit to care for her mother financially and emotionally for a battery of reasons which are too sensitive to mention in this letter.
8.My grandmother, no longer in her daughter’s care is now being held incommunicado by the Zardaris in Dubai. It is said that she continues to be subjected to the mercy and whims of maids and those not in a medically fit position to provide the kind of care she so seriously needs.
The Zardari children have all moved out of Dubai for their schooling and regardless remain in their father’s sway.
9.It is this hold on my grandmother that the Zardaris have dragged her good name into their corruption cases, such as the Swiss SGS/ Cotecna case, and their manipulation of her state of mind and mental decline which have placed her in the horrific position of being listed as a beneficiary of the criminal and unconstitutional NRO. We feel pained and mentally aggrieved that our grandmother and honourable woman is being bracketed with a corrupt government and coterie of in laws, while she is being kept hostage from her direct family.
The extent to which her mental decline has been exploited in regards to the Zardaris corruption is so far unknown.
10.Nusrat Bhutto’s health, both physical and mental, have suffered while she has been held by the Zardaris in Dubai and now her reputation and the legacy of her historical and political significance have been tarnished too.
11.My brother Zulfikar and I are no longer minors we are 19 and 28 years old respectively. We are the children of the late Mir Murtaza Bhutto and the direct heirs of the late Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. We would like our grandmother to be returned to her home to where she rightfully belongs where we may care for her in a loving and stable environment.
12.We could have written to you earlier but having witnessed how our father’s murderers were aided and abetted by State functionaries first to conspire and murder our father and then leaving no stone unturned to assist his killers to obtain their acquittals. The State killed our father. The State investigated his murder. The State conducted the prosecution against my father’s killers and the State acquitted his killers. We watched helplessly as our father’s killers were granted promotions and rewards by the State for their “services”. Finally, in an astonishing Judgment given by an influenced court nobody was held responsible for the cold blooded extra judicial murder of 8 people. Can anybody deny why we did not have faith in any organ of the State? Needles to say, we had no hope of any reprieve. Our hopelessness is exemplified by the fact that we did not even appeal the dubious and obviously influenced acquittals of two of our father’s murderers, notably, the current President Asif Zardari and SP Shakaib Qureshi. We write to you now because recent decisions of the Supreme Court have given us a ray of hope that perhaps justice will be meted out to us.
13.Through this letter, we request you to please order the necessary authorities to bring back our grandmother to us in Pakistan so that we are allowed to take care of her. Please help us do her this one last justice.
Fatima and Zukfikar Ali Bhutto
Source: http://pakobserver.net/201002/03/news/topstories05.asp
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TARA JUNE WINCH:is an Australian writer, her first book,Swallow the air,won saveral major australian literary awards.She is also an ambassador for the indigenous literacy project..
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