Wednesday, November 04, 2013
The state’s crime: Missing persons
THE superior judiciary’s crusade against the state’s crimes on the missing persons’ front has reached a crescendo of sorts. Tomorrow, unless the security apparatus and the governments concerned produce the missing persons the Supreme Court has demanded be produced before it, the court appears set to deliver some unprecedented penalties. But the fight to protect the citizens against illegal confinement, mistreatment and even torture by the state will continue long after Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry brings down his gavel for one last time next week. The dismal truth is that when it comes to balancing the security of the overall citizenry against the individual constitutionally guaranteed rights of those suspected of waging war against the state, the latter has veered too far from its duties and entered the terrain of the grossly illegal. Just how far was made evident on Monday when the Supreme Court was told that two missing persons had died in custody — of natural causes, officials claimed, but that is a claim absolutely no one will believe.
That people have been abducted in Balochistan or allegedly detained on the battlefield in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Fata and then held illegally and even tortured by the security apparatus has been an open secret for many years. It was a wrong that had to be fixed and there was really only one of two options: either the state — the security apparatus and the government that nominally controls it — cleaned up its act on its own or it would eventually have to be pressured into doing so. By now, it has become clear that the course of self-correction is very limited: attempts at revamping the relevant laws and dealing with detainees legally have been overshadowed by a hawkish attitude that sees the issue of missing persons as an undesirable but necessary evil in a murky fight against shadowy enemies. Working within the confines of the law with detainees, respecting the supremacy of constitutional safeguards and rights and improving the rate of successful prosecutions that are upheld on appeal are seen as too complicated or onerous a task by the relevant officials.
So there has been only one path left to try to end the widespread human rights abuses that the security apparatus stands accused of: judicial intervention. The superior judiciary has inserted itself into many crises since 2009, but on the missing persons front, a legacy to be proud of is being built. The superior judiciary must continue to fight the good fight on behalf of the many more as yet nameless and faceless victims.
The knives are out: IJT on the rampage in Lahore
THE arrests at a Punjab University hostel and the subsequent ugly street protest by the Islami Jamiat-i-Talaba in Lahore on Monday were the latest eruptions of tensions that had been brewing for a while now. Simply put, the Punjab University has in recent times been trying to cleanse its campuses of the influence the Jamiat was allowed to build up over time. The violent rioting on Monday was a statement of the Jamiat’s resolve to resist its dethroning. The latest round in the PU-IJT tussle had its origins in an incident last week at the Law College in Lahore in which some Jamiat activists were accused of browbeating a couple of teachers. The incident itself was cause enough for a probe and solution. But in the given circumstances, it was more reason for what is being widely seen as intensification of the campaign to rein in the Jamiat, an action that has been justly demanded over the years to free the Punjab University from fear and the unwritten code imposed on it.
It is not too difficult to see what distinguishes the current Punjab University administration from its predecessors who were always reluctant to move against the Jamiat’s excesses. The IJT’s parent body, the Jamaat-i-Islami, has taken rabid stands on crucial national and global issues such as the war against militancy. There are routine revelations which project the Jamaat as not just a sympathiser of the militants but as their partner. In recent days, reports of the nabbing of a Jamiat worker in Lahore with alleged Al Qaeda links and the death of a former, prominent Jamiat member from Karachi in a drone attack in the tribal areas enhance the portrayal of the JI and IJT as radicals. This image in the context of power and its demands also makes it impossible for the PML-N to maintain good relations with its old JI ally. The separation of the two parties raises the prospect of a real purge that has been long in coming.
Problem of implementation: Code for sectarian peace
EVEN as sectarian tensions simmer — as the latest killings in Karachi demonstrated yesterday — efforts are apace elsewhere to find ways of ratcheting down the tensions between the various Muslim sects in the country and to prevent radical elements from whipping up passions. On Monday, religious leaders gathered in Lahore to endorse a nine-point code of conduct drawn from a previous list already mooted by Maulana Tahir Ashrafi in the Council of Islamic Ideology. The essence of the code of conduct agreed to in Lahore on Monday points in the right direction: curbing sectarian hate speech, banning hate literature and graffiti, resisting the use of mosque loudspeakers for anything other than the call to prayer and sermons in Arabic, etc. However, the same questions that were asked by this newspaper and others when Maulana Ashrafi presented his 15 points before the CII are relevant to assess the latest effort.
Most basically, who will ensure that the code of conduct is adhered to across the board and in an impartial manner? No one ever condones hate speech publicly, but the problem is more specifically elsewhere: few religious leaders condemn it when it emanates from their side of the sectarian divide and is targeted at other groups. Therein lies one of the great tragedies of Pakistan’s by now long-running sectarian problems: the community leaders who ought to be shunning hate either passively tolerate it or actively propagate it. Maulana Ashrafi has talked of the eventual goal being parliamentary legislation and a robust enforcement mechanism. But that only brings the issue to the next problem: does the state have the will or the capacity to enforce its writ in the cauldron of sectarian tensions? So while something has to be done, it’s not yet quite clear what exactly will work.