CHITRAL: The recent discovery of tons of donkey meat passed as beef being fed to unwary people in Islamabad is raising many questions from different angles. Not withstanding the fact that no Pakistani would eat donkey meat knowing it to be so, is one aspect, but the other more serious aspect here is the audacious cheating part from the meat sellers.
Whether it be donkey meat sold as beef or cooking oil made from intestines of dead animals or fake medicines sold as genuine ones, or counterfeit almost everything from Coca Cola to head and shoulder shampoo to steroid injected medicines to coloring fruits and vegetables, to fixing artificial dentures on sacrificial animals, to filling empty mineral water bottles with tap water, to making forged educational documents, to anything to anything, you name it- Let us admit that we have gone overboard in cheating and dishonesty.
If ever there is a competition in dishonesty and immorality, Pakistan would be the top contender, as it stands today.
To cheat is in human nature, but to check and punish cheating is the characteristic attribute that sets civilised nations apart from ones like us. In Pakistan all kind of immoral acts like cheating and defrauding are taken as lightly as eating ice cream.
No visible punishment is doled out to criminals. What happened after the discovery of financial crime worth billions of rupees in Kohistan, nobody knows. The news will soon dissipate into thin air. Similarly nobody would likely be punished in the donkey meat scandal.
Unless criminals of the society are punished promptly and in public, like the hanging on a crane and parading the city as was recently done to child rapists in Kabul, criminals would continue to be encouraged. A teacher in a Madrassa molested a child to death in Abbottabad and politicians came to the rescue of the molester- is what is happening in Pakistan.
Until and unless ruthless punishments are meted out to criminals of the society, (like in Afghanistan) crime in Pakistan will continue to flourish, for we have become morally so thick skinned that we would only understand such language. .. CN report, 29 July 2025
3 thoughts on “The ‘donkey meat’ syndrome in Pakistan”
Sir, it’s absence of both accountability and moral conscience. Until justice is swift and society realizes the sense of right and wrong, these cycles will keep repeating. We need change, externally through law and internally through values.
How can criminals punish criminals !!!
The fear of God is not there in us because religious preachers never get tired emphasizing that Allah will forgive muslims for all such kind of sins. With such mindset instilled in us, the fear of an unforgiving man-made system only can stop crimes of the nature mentioned in the writeup..