Margalla tragedy
The tragic air crash in the Margalla Hills near the heart of Islamabad yesterday is a terrible capstone to a tragic few days for Pakistan. With rain and floods claiming lives across the country, bad weather has again played its part in claiming 152 lives in one go.
Our thoughts go out to the families of the victims at this moment where no words can suffice. At this point, little can be said with certainty about the causes for the crash. Investigations may take weeks or months, and perhaps answers will never be had. But there are some things that are relatively obvious at this early stage. The heroism of ordinary Pakistanis is one of them. The plane crashed in a part of the hills where access for rescue services is difficult; but this did not deter locals in surrounding villages from converging on the scene to try and help. In normal circumstances, volunteerism at the site of accidents can be counter-productive as untrained rescue workers can do more harm than good and impede the efforts of trained personnel. Nevertheless, at least initially many ordinary people showed a brave impulse by racing towards the site of the accident.
Beyond that, it is a story of grim, familiar questions. First of all confusion quickly set in at the accident site because the various agencies that converged there appeared to be working without a central command centre to coordinate search, and if needed rescue, operations. Then, the army was called in to help, but ended up sealing off the site — even from rescue personnel. An hour after the crash, rescue workers complained they were being held back from proceeding towards the crash site by security forces. There was little by way of traffic management. Main avenues in Islamabad were sealed off quickly, but the narrow roads snaking up towards the general vicinity of the crash were choked with traffic, not all of which was rescue-related. To be sure, some element of chaos in the immediate aftermath of an accident of this proportions is perhaps inevitable, but the test of the efficiency and competence of civic and rescue agencies is to see how quickly they can impose order where disorder prevails. On the basis of yesterday’s response time, the authorities in Islamabad have some way to go.
Problems were also evident at the medical end. With no victims surviving, the emergency response of hospitals like PIMS was not tested. However, a well-known problem quickly surfaced: the acute lack of refrigerated mortuary services in the capital city and Rawalpindi. Altogether, less than 20 bodies can be kept refrigerated at any given time in the two cities. With DNA testing and other painstaking processes ahead for identifying the remains of the victims, there is a big question mark over how the authorities will be able to preserve the remains in a dignified manner until identifications can be made.
Perhaps worst of all was the information vacuum, and the misinformation disseminated by the interior and information ministers. With families looking to the authorities for reliable information, the ministers suggested victims had been rescued alive, triggering acute scenes of anxiety and desperation among families suddenly given hope. Surely, ministers should be helping impose order, not creating false hope. Similarly, both the airline concerned and the Civil Aviation Authority did not appear to have a clear response plan that was activated immediately. Training to cope with disasters is an integral part of the airline business, so the rareness of the event is no excuse. Why is it so difficult for professionalism and compassion to go hand in hand? The anxiety etched on the faces of families waiting for news of their loved ones should have been reason enough for them to do so.
New anti-terror bill
The draft of the amended anti-terror law placed before the Senate on Tuesday contains quite a few clauses that should raise concerns among human-rights watchers.
Given the deadly and pandemic nature of the wave of terrorism and the consequent challenge before the security agencies, one can understand the reason behind the government’s keenness to have a stringent anti-terror law. The rate of acquittals is uncomfortably high — suspects in the Islamabad Marriott bombing case were acquitted — and the numbers of those on bail who abscond and under-trial prisoners who are shot dead in courts testify to the lackadaisical way in which the anti-terror machinery operates. For that reason one is not sure whether amendments sought in the law will improve the rate of convictions and mete out justice to all those criminals involved in killing innocent men, women and children throughout Pakistan.
One clause of the bill, which is an expired ordinance recycled, moved by Interior Minister Rehman Malik in the upper house, runs counter to a basic principle of justice — a man is innocent unless proven guilty. For that reason one cannot understand how those who in Mr Malik’s words are the “best of the best legal experts” could approve a clause that places the onus of proving innocence on a person accused of possessing explosives or being involved in acts of terrorism in an area where the armed forces operate. We know how our security agencies, especially the police, operate. ‘Recovering’ explosives — or, as the joke goes, even an F-16 — from someone who is on the wrong side of a security agency or a police officer is something that has been part of the tactics our investigation agencies employ. Already, a large part of our police is corrupt, and ‘disappearances’ and extrajudicial killings are common. With this new clause added to the Anti-Terrorism Act of 1997 there is every possibility that the law may be misused more than ever before.
More regrettably, one of the 25 clauses enables the security agencies to detain for 90 days a person found to be in possession of property considered out of proportion to his known sources of income. This is an obnoxious clause. For decades our governments, both civilian and military, have perpetrated a big fraud on the nation in the name of ‘accountability’. The addition of this clause will give this and future governments a legal nostrum to throw their political foes into prison for 90 days on charges stemming from the anti-terror law. It is true that since 9/11, the world has changed in a big way, and many countries have amended their anti-terrorism laws. But the amendments being made in the Pakistani law are contrary to the universally accepted principles of fundamental rights and are bound to be misused by the police. The truth is that terrorism cannot be defeated merely through draconian laws that pose a threat to civil society. It must be tackled through overall improvement in the working of the prosecution machinery and investigation techniques.