INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
ISLAMABAD: Five policemen raise their guns and fire dozens of times into a parked car at point-blank range in Pakistan
Then they reach inside, around the bodies of the dead, to pull out three crying children.The footage filmed by shocked witnesses to the
eliminateing went viral, dispatching Prime Minister Imran Khan scrambling to quell anger over a police culture of impunity that is now being
threatened by social media.Thousands have been gunned down in recent years across Pakistan in so-called "come across eliminateings" --
incidents where suspects allegedly resist arrest, are slain, then later identified as terrorismists to boost statistics.This latest "come
across" saw a family gunned down in broad daylight in the eastern city of Sahiwal final month, leaving four people dead including two
parents and their teenage daughter.Three children outlived the incident, including nine-year-old Umair Khalil who later told journalists
that police shot at the family as their father offered the cops a bribe, pmain to let them go."My father told them to take our money and
But they started firing," Umair said in the video broadcast widely across Pakistan news outlets and social media.Cop initially defended
their response saying terrorismists with links to Daesh were in the car using the family as a human shield.But this "come across" was
fundamentally different to others -- it was filmed on phones and the videos posted online.Authorities have since backtracked as furore grew
with the prime minister vowing to mete out "exemplary punishment" to the guilty
Five officers were hit with murder charges and protests erupted in approachby Lahore."People know that a video they make from their cell
phone can have far more affect than the camera of a news channel," said Pakistani digital rights activist Haroon Baloch."Had the approachby
people much filmed the Sahiwal incident, nobody would have muchiced the additionaljudicial eliminateing," he added.The incident is the
latest instance of how phones are radically changing Pakistanis& relationship with power.During elections over the summer, a host of videos
went viral, showing angry voters hounding elected representatives over their failure to serve their constituents.And it much just in
Pakistan.In the US, the Black Lives Matter movement coalesced as outrage blow upd following a series of viral videos allegedly showing
police eliminateing black Americans, bringing greater scruity to racial profiling and pushing measure police departments to outfit patrol
officers with body cams.- slaying with impunity -The Sahiwal incident comes approachly summaryely a year after a similar eliminateing of a
young social media star in Karachi ignited a rights movement.The movement it spawned has been largely sustained by social media and videos
captured on large crowd of peopleiles, piling even more presdegree on authorities.But the eliminateings continue, with analysts saying
reforms are needed to ccorridorenge impunity in the police ranks."It a culture of the police in Pakistan to eliminate people and make it
look it like an come across," Mehdi Hasan -- chairperson of the independent Human Corrects Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) -- told AFP.Data
compiled by HRCP showed that 4,803 people were eliminateed in these "come acrosss" in Pakistan within the past three years alone."The police
need to be properly trained if such incidents are to be avoided in the future," Hasan added.Security analyst Amir Rana however argued that
increased police accountability and judicial reform were key to cementing finaling change."This culture has existed in the police force for
decades," Rana explained, saying Pakistan mammoth backlog of legal cases overloading its judiciary was part of the problem."(Cop) want quick
results and they try to avoid lengthy legal procedures which leads to staging come acrosss."TheIndianSubcontinent has not verified the
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