|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
About Benazir
Bhutto |
|
|
|
21 June
1953 – 27 December 2007 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto was a Pakistani politician who chaired the Pakistan Peoples
Party (PPP), a centre-left political party in Pakistan. Bhutto was the first woman
elected to lead a Muslim state, having twice been Prime Minister of Pakistan (1988–1990;
1993–1996). She was Pakistan’s first and to date only female prime minister. She
was also the wife of current Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari.
Bhutto was the eldest child of former Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, and Begum
Nusrat Bhutto, a Pakistani of Kurdish descent. Her paternal grandfather was Sir
Shah Nawaz Bhutto, who came to Larkana District in Sindh before the independence
from his native town of Bhatto Kalan, in the Indian state of Haryana.
Bhutto was sworn in as Prime Minister for the first time in 1988 at the age of 35,
but was removed from office 20 months later under the order of then-president Ghulam
Ishaq Khan on grounds of alleged corruption. In 1993 she was re-elected but was
again removed in 1996 on similar charges, this time by President Farooq Leghari.
She went into self-imposed exile in Dubai in 1998 |
Bhutto returned to Pakistan on 18 October 2007, after reaching an understanding
with President Pervez Musharraf by which she was granted amnesty and all corruption
charges were withdrawn. She was assassinated on 27 December 2007, after departing
a PPP rally in the Pakistani city of Rawalpindi, two weeks before the scheduled
Pakistani general election of 2008 where she was a leading opposition candidate.
The following year she was named one of seven winners of the United Nations Prize
in the Field of Human Rights |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Education and personal life
|
|
|
|
Benazir Bhutto was born at Pinto Hospital in Karachi, Dominion of Pakistan on 21
June 1953 to Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, former Prime Minister of Pakistan and Begum Nusrat
Ispahani. She attended the Lady Jennings Nursery School and Convent of Jesus and
Mary in Karachi. After two years of schooling at the Rawalpindi Presentation Convent,
she was sent to the Jesus and Mary Convent at Murree. She passed her O-level examinations
at the age of 15. She then went on to complete her A-Levels at the Karachi Grammar
School.
After completing her early education in Pakistan, she pursued her higher education
in the United States. From 1969 to 1973 she attended Radcliffe College at Harvard
University, where she obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree with cum laude honors in
comparative government. She was also elected to Phi Beta Kappa. Bhutto would later
call her time at Harvard “four of the happiest years of my life” and said it formed
“the very basis of her belief in democracy”. Later in 1995 as Prime Minister, she
would arrange a gift from the Pakistani government to Harvard Law School. On June
2006, she received an Honorary LL.D degree from the University of Toronto.
The next phase of her education took place in the United Kingdom. Between 1973 and
1977 Bhutto studied Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford,
during which time she completed additional courses in International Law and Diplomacy.
After LMH she attend St Catherine’s College, Oxford and in December 1976 she was
elected president of the Oxford Union, becoming the first Asian woman to head the
prestigious debating society
On 18 December 1987, she married Asif Ali Zardari in Karachi. The couple had three
children: two daughters Bakhtawar and Asifa and a son named Bilawal. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Family
|
|
|
|
Benazir Bhutto’s father, Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, was removed from office
following a military coup in 1977 led by the then chief of army General Muhammad
Zia-ul-Haq, who imposed martial law but promised to hold elections within three
months. Nevertheless, instead of fulfilling the promise of holding general elections,
General Zia charged Mr. Bhutto with conspiring to murder the father of dissident
politician Ahmed Raza Kasuri. Mr. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was sentenced to death by
the martial law court.
Despite the accusation being “widely doubted by the public”, and many clemency appeals
from foreign leaders, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was hanged on 4 April 1979. Appeals for
clemency were dismissed by acting President General Zia. Benazir Bhutto and her
mother were held in a “police camp” until the end of May, after the execution
n 1985, Benazir Bhutto’s brother Shahnawaz was killed under suspicious circumstances
in France. In 1996, the killing of her other brother, Mir Murtaza, contributed to
destabilizing her second term as Prime Minister. Murtaza, who had been outspoken
in his accusations of corruption by his sister and her husband Zardari, was gunned
down just outside of his home by police. This extrajudicial killing was almost certainly
approved at the highest levels and it was widely believed to have been instigated
directly by Bhutto’s husband Zardari |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Struggle against martial law of
General Zia-ul-Haq
|
|
|
|
After the overthrow of her father Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s government
in a bloodless coup Benazir Bhutto spent the next eighteen months in and out of
house arrest as she struggled to rally political support to force Zia to drop murder
charges against her father. The military dictator ignored worldwide appeals for
clemency and had Zulfikar Bhutto hanged in April 1979. Following the hanging of
her father Bhutto was arrested repeatedly, however, following PPP’s victory in the
local elections Zia postponed the national elections indefinitely and moved Bhutto
and her mother Nusrat Bhutto from Karachi to Larkana. This was seventh time Benazir
had been arrested within two years of the military coup. Repeatedly put under house
arrest, the regime finally imprisoned her under solitary confinement in a desert
cell in Sindhi province during the summer of 1981. She described the conditions
in her wall-less cage in her book “Daughter of Destiny”:
|
|
|
|
“The summer heat turned my cell into an oven. My skin split and peeled, coming off
my hands in sheets. Boils erupted on my face. My hair, which had always been thick,
began to come out by the handful. Insects crept into the cell like invading armies.
Grasshoppers, mosquitoes, stinging flies, bees and bugs came up through the cracks
in the floor and through the open bars from the courtyard. Big black ants, cockroaches,
seething clumps of little red ants and spiders. I tried pulling the sheet over my
head at night to hide from their bites, pushing it back when it got too hot to breathe.”
|
|
|
|
After her six month imprisonment in Sukkur jail, she remained hospitalized for months
after which she was shifted to Karachi Central Jail, where she remained imprisoned
till 11 December 1981. She was then placed under house arrests in Larkana and Karachi
eleven and fourteen months respectively. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Movement for Restoration of Democracy
|
|
|
|
As restrictions on press and media were intensified and persecution of political
activist increased Bhutto realized that only way to fight Zia’s regime was to unite
with a section of the opposition PNA. The talks with PNA were successful and Movement
for Restoration of Democracy (MRD) was established. The movement was widely supported
by people of Pakistan and brutally repressed by the junta. The MRD included sections
of Pakistani society that were outside Zia’s preview of Islamization of the country,
like Shiites, ethnic minorities such as Balochs, Pathans and Sindhis and Bhutto’s
own PPP. While Benazir spent most of the time under house arrests and imprisonments
the MRD movement continued its protests against the regime. An estimated twenty
thousand PPP workers were killed and between 40,000 to 150,000 people made political
prisoners in crackdown by Zia. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Self-exile in London
|
|
|
|
In January 1984, after six years of house arrests and imprisonment, Zia succumbed
to international pressure and allowed Bhutto to travel abroad for medical reasons.
After undergoing a surgery she resumed her political activities and began to raise
concerns about the mistreatment of political prisoners in Pakistan at the behest
of Zia regime. The intensified pressure forced Zia into holding a referendum to
give certain legitimacy to his government. The referendum held on 1 December 1984
proved a farce and due to only ten percent voter turnout despite use of state machinery.
Further pressure from the international community forced Zia into holding elections,
for a unicameral legislature on a non-party basis. The PPP thus announced a boycott
of the election on the grounds that they were not being held in accordance with
the constitution of Pakistan. She continued to raise voice against human rights
violations by the regime and addressed the European Parliament in Strasbourg in
1985,
“When the conscience of the world is justly aroused against apartheid and against
human rights violations …. then that conscience ought not to close its eyes to the
murder by military courts which takes place in a country which receives …. aid from
the West itself.” The speech was responded by the Zia regime with announcement of
death sentences of 54 PPP workers in a military court in Lahore".
Bhutto, who had returned to Pakistan after completing her studies, found herself
placed under house arrest in the wake of her father’s imprisonment and subsequent
execution. Having been allowed in 1984 to return to the United Kingdom, she became
a leader in exile of the PPP, her father’s party, though she was unable to make
her political presence felt in Pakistan until after the death of General Muhammad
Zia-ul-Haq. She had succeeded her mother as leader of the PPP and the pro-democracy
opposition to the Zia-ul-Haq regime.
The seat from which Benazir contested for the post of Prime Minister, was the same
one from which her father had previously contested, namely, NA 207. This seat was
first contested in 1926 by the late Sardar Wahid Bux Bhutto, in the first ever elections
in Sindh. The elections were for the Central Legislative Assembly of India. Sardar
Wahid Bux won, and became not only the first elected representative from Sindh to
a democratically elected parliament, but also the youngest member of the Central
Legislative Assembly, aged 27. Wahid Bux’s achievement was monumental as it was
he who was the first Bhutto elected to a government, from a seat which would, thereafter
always be contested by his family members. Therefore, it was he who provided the
breakthrough and a start to this cycle. Sardar Wahid Bux went on to be elected to
the Bombay Council as well. After Wahid Bux’s untimely and mysterious death at the
age of 33, his younger brother Nawab Nabi Bux Bhutto contested from the same seat
and remained undefeated until retirement. It was he who then gave this seat to Zulfikar
Ali Bhutto to contest.
On 16 November 1988, in the first open election in more than a decade, Bhutto’s
PPP won the largest bloc of seats in the National Assembly. Bhutto was sworn in
as Prime Minister of a coalition government on December 2, becoming at age 35 the
youngest person—and the first woman—to head the government of a Muslim-majority
state in modern times. In 1989, Benazir was awarded the Prize For Freedom by the
Liberal International. Bhutto’s accomplishments during this time were in initiatives
for nationalist reform and modernization that some conservatives characterized as
Westernization.
Bhutto’s government was dismissed in 1990 following charges of corruption, for which
she was never tried. Zia’s protégé Nawaz Sharif came to power after the October
1990 elections. She served as leader of the opposition while Sharif served as Prime
Minister for the next three years.
In October 1993 elections were held again and her PPP coalition was victorious,
returning Bhutto to office and allowing her to continue her reform initiatives.
According to journalist Shyam Bhatia, Bhutto smuggled CDs containing uranium enrichment
data to North Korea on a state visit that same year in return for data on missile
technology.[20] In 1996, amidst various corruption scandals Bhutto was dismissed
by then-president Farooq Leghari, who used the Eighth Amendment discretionary powers
to dissolve the government. The Supreme Court affirmed President Leghari’s dismissal
in a 6-1 ruling. Criticism against Bhutto came from the Punjabi elites and powerful
landlord families who opposed Bhutto. She blamed this opposition for the destabilization
of Pakistan. Musharraf characterized Bhutto’s terms as an “era of sham democracy”
and others characterized her terms a period of corrupt, failed governments.
During the election campaigns the Bhutto government voiced its concern for women’s
social and health issues, including the issue of discrimination against women. Bhutto
announced plans to establish women’s police stations, courts, and women’s development
banks. Despite these plans, Bhutto did not propose any legislation to improve welfare
services for women. During her election campaigns, she promised to repeal controversial
laws (such as Hudood and Zina ordinances) that curtail the rights of women in Pakistan.
Bhutto was pro-life and spoke forcefully against abortion, most notably at the International
Conference on Population and Development in Cairo, where she accused the West of
“seeking to impose adultery, abortion, intercourse education and other such matters
on individuals, societies and religions which have their own social ethos.”
Bhutto was an active and founding member of the Council of Women World Leaders,
a network of current and former prime ministers and presidents. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
2002 election
|
|
|
|
The Bhutto-led PPP secured the highest number of votes (28.42%) and eighty seats
(23.16%) in the national assembly in the October 2002 general elections. Pakistan
Muslim League (N) (PML-N) managed to win eighteen seats only. Some of the elected
candidates of PPP formed a faction of their own, calling it PPP-Patriots which was
being led by Faisal Saleh Hayat, the former leader of Bhutto-led PPP. They later
formed a coalition government with Musharraf’s party, PML-Q. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Return to Pakistan
|
|
|
|
 |
|
In mid-2002 Musharraf implemented a two-term limit on Prime Ministers. Both Bhutto
and Musharraf’s other chief rival, Nawaz Sharif, have already served two terms as
Prime Minister. Musharraf’s allies in parliament, especially the PMLQ, are unlikely
to reverse the changes to allow Prime Ministers to seek third terms, nor to make
particular exceptions for either Bhutto or Sharif.
In July 2007, some of Bhutto’s frozen funds were released. Bhutto continued to face
significant charges of corruption. In an 8 August 2007 interview with the Canadian
Broadcasting Corporation, Bhutto revealed the meeting focused on her desire to return
to Pakistan for the 2008 elections, and of Musharraf retaining the Presidency with
Bhutto as Prime Minister. On 29 August 2007, Bhutto announced that Musharraf would
step down as chief of the army. On September 1, 2007, Bhutto vowed to return to
Pakistan “very soon”, regardless of whether or not she reached a power-sharing deal
with Musharraf before then |
On September 17, 2007, Bhutto accused Musharraf’s allies of pushing Pakistan into
crisis by their refusal to permit democratic reforms and power-sharing. A nine-member
panel of Supreme Court judges deliberated on six petitions (including one from Jamaat-e-Islami,
Pakistan’s largest Islamic group) asserting that Musharraf be disqualified from
contending for the presidency of Pakistan. Bhutto stated that her party could join
one of the opposition groups, potentially that of Nawaz Sharif. Attorney-general
Malik Mohammed Qayyum stated that, pendente lite, the Election Commission was “reluctant”
to announce the schedule for the presidential vote. Bhutto’s party’s Farhatullah
Babar stated that the Constitution of Pakistan could bar Musharraf from being elected
again because he was already chief of the army: “As Gen. Musharraf was disqualified
from contesting for President, he has prevailed upon the Election Commission to
arbitrarily and illegally tamper with the Constitution of Pakistan.”
Musharraf prepared to switch to a strictly civilian role by resigning from his position
as commander-in-chief of the armed forces. He still faced other legal obstacles
to running for re-election. On 2 October 2007, Gen. Musharraf named Lt. Gen. Ashfaq
Kayani, as vice chief of the army starting October 8 with the intent that if Musharraf
won the presidency and resigned his military post, Kayani would become chief of
the army. Meanwhile, Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed stated that officials agreed to
grant Benazir Bhutto amnesty versus pending corruption charges. She has emphasized
the smooth transition and return to civilian rule and has asked Pervez Musharraf
to shed uniform. On 5 October 2007, Musharraf signed the National Reconciliation
Ordinance, giving amnesty to Bhutto and other political leaders—except exiled former
premier Nawaz Sharif—in all court cases against them, including all corruption charges.
The Ordinance came a day before Musharraf faced the crucial presidential poll. Both
Bhutto’s opposition party, the PPP, and the ruling PMLQ, were involved in negotiations
beforehand about the deal. In return, Bhutto and the PPP agreed not to boycott the
Presidential election. On 6 October 2007, Musharraf won a parliamentary election
for President. However, the Supreme Court ruled that no winner can be officially
proclaimed until it finishes deciding on whether it was legal for Musharraf to run
for President while remaining Army General. Bhutto’s PPP party did not join the
other opposition parties’ boycott of the election, but did abstain from voting.
Later, Bhutto demanded security coverage on-par with the President’s. Bhutto also
contracted foreign security firms for her protection. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Return
|
|
|
|
Bhutto was well aware of the risk to her own life that might result from her return
from exile to campaign for the leadership position. In an interview on September
28, 2007, with reporter Wolf Blitzer of CNN, she readily admitted the possibility
of attack on herself.
After eight years in exile in Dubai and London, Bhutto returned to Karachi on 18
October 2007, to prepare for the 2008 national elections.
En route to a rally in Karachi on 18 October 2007, two explosions occurred shortly
after Bhutto had landed and left Jinnah International Airport. She was not injured
but the explosions, later found to be a suicide-bomb attack, killed 136 people and
injured at least 450. The dead included at least 50 of the security guards from
her PPP who had formed a human chain around her truck to keep potential bombers
away, as well as six police officers. A number of senior officials were injured.
Bhutto, after nearly ten hours of the parade through Karachi, ducked back down into
the steel command center to remove her sandals from her swollen feet, moments before
the bomb went off. She was escorted unharmed from the scene.
Bhutto later claimed that she had warned the Pakistani government that suicide bomb
squads would target her upon her return to Pakistan and that the government had
failed to act. She was careful not to blame Pervez Musharraf for the attacks, accusing
instead “certain individuals within the government who abuse their positions, who
abuse their powers” to advance the cause of Islamic militants. Shortly after the
attempt on her life, Bhutto wrote a letter to Musharraf naming four persons whom
she suspected of carrying out the attack. Those named included Chaudhry Pervaiz
Elahi, a rival PML-Q politician and chief minister of Pakistan’s Punjab province,
Hamid Gul, former director of the Inter-Services Intelligence, and Ijaz Shah, the
director general of the Intelligence Bureau, another of the country’s intelligence
agencies. All those named are close associates of General Musharraf. Bhutto has
a long history of accusing parts of the government, particularly Pakistan’s premier
military intelligence agencies, of working against her and her party because they
oppose her liberal, secular agenda. Bhutto claimed that the ISI has for decades
backed militant Islamic groups in Kashmir and in Afghanistan. She was protected
by her vehicle and a “human cordon” of supporters who had anticipated suicide attacks
and formed a chain around her to prevent potential bombers from getting near her.
The total number of injured, according to PPP sources, stood at 1000, with at least
160 dead (The New York Times claims 134 dead and about 450 injured).
A few days later, Bhutto’s lawyer Senator Farooq H. Naik said he received a letter
threatening to kill his client. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Assassination
|
|
|
|
On 27 December 2007, Bhutto was killed while leaving a campaign rally for the PPP
at Liaquat National Bagh, where she had given a spirited address to party supporters
in the run-up to the January 2008 parliamentary elections. After entering her bulletproof
vehicle, Bhutto stood up through its sunroof to wave to the crowds. At this point,
a gunman fired shots at her and subsequently explosives were detonated near the
vehicle killing approximately 20 people. Bhutto was critically wounded and was rushed
to Rawalpindi General Hospital. She was taken into surgery at 17:35 local time,
and pronounced dead at 18:16.
Bhutto’s body was flown to her hometown of Garhi Khuda Bakhsh in Larkana District,
Sindh, and was buried next to her father in the family mausoleum at a ceremony attended
by hundreds of thousands of mourners.
There was some disagreement about the exact cause of death. Bhutto’s husband refused
to permit an autopsy or post-mortem examination to be carried out. On 28 December
2007, the Interior Ministry of Pakistan stated that “Bhutto was killed when she
tried to duck back into the vehicle, and the shock waves from the blast knocked
her head into a lever attached to the sunroof, fracturing her skull”. However, a
hospital spokesman stated earlier that she had suffered shrapnel wounds to the head
and that this was the cause of her death. Bhutto’s aides have also disputed the
Interior Ministry’s account. On December 31, CNN posted the alleged emergency room
admission report as a PDF file. The document appears to have been signed by all
the admitting physicians and notes that no object was found inside the wound.
Al-Qaeda commander Mustafa Abu-al-Yazid claimed responsibility for the attack, describing
Bhutto as “the most precious American asset.” The Pakistani government also stated
that it had proof that al-Qaeda was behind the assassination. A report for CNN stated:
“the Interior Ministry also earlier told Pakistan’s Geo TV that the suicide bomber
belonged to Lashkar i Jhangvi—an al-Qaeda-linked militant group that the government
has blamed for hundreds of killings”. The government of Pakistan claimed Baitullah
Mehsud was the mastermind behind the assassination. Lashkar i Jhangvi, a Muslim
extremist organization affiliated with al-Qaeda that also attempted in 1999 to assassinate
former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, is alleged to have been responsible for the
killing of the 54-year-old Bhutto along with approximately 20 bystanders, however
this is vigorously disputed by the Bhutto family, by the PPP that Bhutto had headed
and by Baitullah Mehsud. On 3 January 2008, President Musharraf officially denied
participating in the assassination of Benazir Bhutto as well as failing to provide
her proper security. |
|
|