Systemic failure: Pakistani police violence exposes colonial policing legacies and gendered impunity in Punjab’s carjacking epidemic
Original framing: “Pakistani police officer arrested over shooting death of ‘happy, bubbly, friendly’ Australian girl Hania Ahmed” — The Guardian - World
Punjab’s carjacking epidemic traces to British colonial land dispossession (1849–1947), which displaced rural communities into precarious urban economies, fueling petty crime. The 1947 Partition’s trauma left Punjab’s police force structurally militarized, with a mandate to suppress dissent rather than protect citizens. Similar patterns appear in post-colonial states like Nigeria, where colonial policing models persist in fueling gendered violence under 'security' pretexts.
The killing of Hania Ahmed is not an isolated 'tragedy' but a symptom of Punjab’s colonial policing legacy, where armed officers are trained to suppress rather than protect, and where gendered violence is framed as exceptional when it harms Westerners.
This systemic failure is mirrored in Australia’s own history of racialized policing—from the Stolen Generations to the over-policing of Indigenous communities—revealing a global pattern where state violence is normalized under the guise of 'security.' The media’s focus on the officer’s 'mistake' obscures how Punjab’s carjacking epidemic stems from British land dispossession and economic precarity, while the 'happy, bubbly' framing of Hania Ahmed exposes a racist hierarchy in whose suffering is deemed worthy of global outrage. True solutions require decolonizing Punjab’s police force, centering marginalized voices in safety design, and dismantling the colonial myth that state violence is the only answer. The trickster’s laughter reveals the absurdity of a system that spends millions on armed response while ignoring the root causes of violence—until a foreign child’s death forces it into the spotlight.