The suffering of the people of Pakistan is largely unknown in the West. A veil of silence has been carefully drawn over the number of people killed every day by American drones and Taliban murders. But recently a small corner of the curtain was raised as the result of a particularly appalling event.

Bhagat Singh was a fervent torchbearer of the proletarian struggle. He rejected the prejudices of caste, creed, nationality, race, gender, and, of course, religion.

Sixteen years ago on September 20, 1996, in the dusk falling into darkness, Mir Murtaza Bhutto, aged 42, was riddled with the bullets of this ferocious state. He was assassinated along with six of his comrades in front of his house, 70 Clifton, Karachi — the most renowned political address in Pakistan. At the time, ironically, his sister was the prime minister and the chief executive of the country. Innumerable conspiracy theories and accusations have been doing the rounds since. Yet none of the culprits have been apprehended or indicted and those personnel of the state forces who were named and arrested have gone scot-free.

The Pakistan Trade Union Defence Campaign has organised a campaign of public meetings to commemorate the hundreds of workers who were recently killed in fire factories in Karachi and Lahore, exposing the criminal behaviour of the owners who had locked all exits bar one [at the Karachi factory] and even then insisted that finished goods should have priority over workers trying to escape to save their lives! The capitalists of Pakistan stand condemned before the whole of the working people.

The horrific factory fire at a Karachi garments and clothing enterprise where 289 workers, men, women and children, perished and hundreds were injured with severe burn wounds in an inferno in a caged factory with sealed gates is not an exception but the norm for the proletariat in Pakistan. It lays bare the conditions in which they are forced to work.

The dominant intelligentsia with its constricted outlook, shackled in the fetters of an obsolete and redundant capitalist ideology, is now the merchant of doom.

For quite some time now several so called secular parties, especially the MQM, have been campaigning around the idea that feudalism is the real cause of the country’s plight and its abolishment is the only solution to Pakistan’s tribulations. Their endeavour is in fact mainly to defend the petty bourgeois businesses and the Mafia capitalism on which they rely for their social and economic basis.

This year July 5 marked the 35th anniversary of the military coup in Pakistan that toppled the democratic government of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto in the pitch darkness of the night. This coup was led by General Ziaul Haq who deposed the first PPP government and imposed the most vicious and tyrannous military dictatorship in the country’s history.

The latest strike of the young doctors has not only shaken the healthcare system in the Punjab but has laid bare its extreme decay and the callousness of the ruling elite towards the wellbeing of ordinary people. There have been a series of doctors’ strikes in the recent period particularly in the Punjab. Above all this exposes the rapid decline of the living conditions of professionals and the pauperisation of the once relatively prosperous middle classes.

The deposition of a relatively feeble chief executive by the hyper-swanked judiciary is yet another episode in the ongoing internecine conflicts between the different sections of the state to protect the interests of Pakistan’s ruling classes.

Unleashing of one scandal upon another of the scandalous Pakistani ruling class has almost become a norm in this society, ravaged by the disastrous crisis of a diseased capitalist system. It’s not just the corrupt and criminal nature of the elite that is being exposed but the decay and despicable conditions of the state and society are becoming more evident for the masses to comprehend.

The rapid deterioration of the relations and the seething though muted hostility between the US and Pakistan is due to the closing of the NATO supply route through the latter’s territory by the partner in the “war on terror”. What is being demanded, along with other things, is the increase in transit charges for NATO trailers from $250 to $5000.

Pakistan has one of the largest numbers of internet users in world despite its crumbling economy, rotten infrastructure and political & social instability. This is a striking example of “uneven and combined development” under capitalism in so called third world countries. The development of the new website of The Struggle tendency is a step forward for the work of the IMT in this country.

The exceptionally pro capitalist (2012-13) budget with large scale tax exemptions and benefits for the rich is a deceptive trap for the working classes whose blood, sweat and tears will be squeezed even more with the burgeoning crisis of Pakistani capitalism. In the recent period the masses have lost interest and suspense in the budget presentation ritual. This revulsion and distrust towards the asseverations of the ruling politicians and bureaucrats over the last period is not without a cause. Annual budgets have become a farcical exercise.

The brutal firing and gruesome killings at a rally in Karachi is yet another episode that epitomises the downward spiral into which the society and the state is unravelling disastrously. Under the deafening din of democracy, reconciliation, rule of law and independent judiciary, the economic meltdown is taking its toll on the beleaguered masses of this unfortunate land in the form of escalating violence, crime and bloodshed.