Chinese at risk
In what appears
to be a targeted attack, the managing director of a Chinese company has been
shot dead in an upmarket area of Karachi. His colleague fortunately escaped
injury despite the gunman emptying his pistol at them both. A passerby was
wounded in the leg. The attacker then fled, remaining unidentified because the
area’s CCTV cameras were not working. The Chinese company, Cosco Shipping, is
not connected to any China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) projects but has
been working in Pakistan since the early 1990s. On the day of the incident, the
Chinese nationals had dispensed with the police security provided to them. This
is not the first instance of Chinese nationals working in Pakistan ignoring the
imperatives of their safety. Nor is this the first such attack on Chinese
nationals in Karachi. They have been targeted in the metropolis several times
before but fortunately none were killed. That cannot be said about Chinese
nationals working on CPEC in Balochistan, where Gwadar port is set to become
the heart and linchpin of the flagship project of China’s One Belt One Road
(OBOR) ambitions. Police investigators surmise that the deceased’s car was
probably tailed by the assailant, who either knew beforehand or discovered
while following the car that there was no police security on the day. Although
no claim of responsibility has surfaced so far, the involvement of some
militant/terrorist organisation cannot be ruled out. In a typical ‘bolt the
stable door after the horse has bolted’ mode, security has been beefed up in
Karachi, the whole province of Sindh and hopefully throughout the country for foreigners,
particularly Chinese nationals. Intelligence agencies are reportedly warning of
the possibility of further attacks on Chinese nationals in Pakistan. By now,
hundreds of Chinese are working in Pakistan on CPEC-related and other projects,
and 4,000 police are reportedly deployed for their security. In a prescient
warning in December 2017, China alerted its nationals in Pakistan of plans for
imminent attacks on Chinese targets. The Chinese presence is growing as $ 57
billion has been pledged for CPEC, which initially was focused on building
roads and power stations but is now expanding into setting up industries. All
this development activity has already drawn in increasing numbers of Chinese
nationals and as this huge investment starts to translate more and more into facts
on the ground, is likely to open the floodgates of Chinese nationals’ induction
inside Pakistan.
The tragic incident
in Karachi indicates a number of areas in which improvement in the manner
things are being done suggests itself. First and foremost, all Chinese
nationals already in Pakistan, whether working on CPEC-related projects or not
(since the Karachi attack indicates such fine distinctions are unlikely to
enter the minds of those wishing to inflict harm on the Chinese), and those to
come, need to follow strictly the protocols set out for their security and
safety. This is certainly not the only factor that has led to the unfortunate
loss of Chinese lives in Pakistan, but it is a requirement of the times.
Second, given the challenges of combating terrorism and protecting not only our
Chinese guests but our citizenry at large, we need to imbibe the absent culture
of timely maintenance. The fact that CCTV systems set up at great cost to
assist security and crime related investigations often are found dysfunctional
indicates that whoever is in charge of monitoring these systems either is
unaware of their dysfunctioning or does not care to have it rectified in timely
fashion. Last but not least, the Pakistan government should have sent a message
to Beijing expressing regrets for the killing of the Chinese national and
assuring our friend that such incidents would as far as possible be prevented
in future. Chinese friendship and support should not be taken for granted and
needs to be treated with the respect it deserves.
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