news details |
|
|
| 400 people made to "disappear" in Pakistan | | Musharraf wonders as Iqbal Haider thunders | | BL KAK
NEW DELHI, FEB 11
Pakistan President, Gen. Parvez Musharraf, has no option but to wonder over the courageous stand taken by the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) while calling a spade a spade. After repeatedly protesting the state practice of making people "disappear", the HRCP has finally decided to take the matter to the Supreme Court of Pakistan. Ther apex court itself has tried to compel the Musharraf government — with partial success — to yield up citizens kept in defiance of the law of habeas corpus.
Iqbal Haider, who is the Secretary General of the HRCP, announced in Islamabad on Friday (Feb. 9) that 400 people have been made to "disappear" by the functionaries of the state since 2001 and there are hundreds more who have returned from illegal confinement and torture but are too scared to plead their case. The year 2006 was a particularly bad year for the "disappeared" as it was also a year of great pressure on the government. The armed forces, paramilitary forces and security agencies are clearly involved in the abduction of Pakistani citizens, many of whom have "suffered an extreme degree of torture". There may be hundreds more whose whereabouts are not known in state custody.
According to the chairperson of the HRCP, Asma Jahangir, most of the "disappeared" were not suspected militants but government opponents from the province of Balochistan where ethnic minority nationalists have been waging an insurgency for provincial autonomy. Add to this the 1,000 women killed annually in honour-crimes, and Pakistan has a dysfunctional government that has two faces, the pretty one, she said, for the diplomatic enclave and the ugly one for the people.
Reports from Islamabad have made it plain that the HRCP case will be pleaded at the Supreme Court by Pakistan’s most respected retired judge of the Supreme Court and lawyer, Fakhruddin G Ibrahim. The HRCP has asked the honourable court to set up an independent ‘Commission on Disappearances’ comprising senior lawyers, parliamentarians and former judges "to take the testimony of persons who have suffered involuntary disappearances as well as of family members of those who are still untraced".
It has to be conceded that Pakistan was never a utopia of human rights. Democracy or no democracy, Pakistanis have had to struggle against those who govern them, those that are powerful in society, and against society itself and its rigid belief systems. Those who write in favour of the rights of the "disappeared" people today are good people but in many cases they may stand on the other side of the line when it comes to defending the HRCP and its mission in Pakistan. Funnily, though, when in opposition Pak politicians have approved of the HRCP and even sought its help, but when in power they have tried to shut it up and even use force against it. Worse still, instead of crying against human rights abuses within Pakistan, these politicians are, more often than not, found engaged in whipping up anti-India sentiment over the alleged human rights violations in Indian Kashmir.
But as time passes, the average Pakistani is being made to realise that defence of human rights is a good tradition even when it appears to clash with their religious and political beliefs. Therefore, the present government in Islamabad may complain that it is less oppressive than some governments in the past, but it must bend all efforts to prevent its malfunctioning institutions from bringing it a bad name. In particular, when the state punishes its citizens in the name of "national security", it is laying itself open to a permanent threat to its longevity. Citizens tortured simply because they want their political rights recognised will neither forget nor forgive.
In the present case most of the disappearances have taken place in Balochistan, a province away from the centre and only partially under a proper writ of the state. Despite the fact that the Penal Code and the Code of Criminal Procedure are formally in operation, the province enjoys a B Area status, that is, it is at the mercy of the branch-line officers who recommend themselves to the central government on their ability to ‘control’ the population. The judicial system is not as robust as it should be and if the police has kept a person without trial for years it is only because it can do so. Apart from Balochistan there are other areas in Pakistan where being away from the big administrative centres can be tough on citizens seeking justice.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
| |
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
