HRCP’s Report
The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan’s (HRCP’s) annual
report entitled State of Human Rights in
2017 analyses with its customary spread and care the human rights landscape
in the country. This year’s report is the first after the passing away of human
rights fighter Asma Jahangir, one of the founders of HRCP. The Report is
therefore appropriately dedicated to her. The contents of the Report cover the
whole gamut of curbs on freedom of expression and association and the
violations of human rights. It warns that the role of unelected, non-representative
elements is increasing day by day. It highlights the increase in enforced
disappearances (EDs), targeted violence against soft targets such as the
minorities, extrajudicial killings and the extension of military courts’
jurisdiction. One of the most fundamental human rights, democratic governance,
remained under serious strain throughout 2017. The writ of the state shrank,
terrorism casualties declined but attacks against the minorities went up. In the
first 10 months of 2017, 5,660 crimes were recorded against women and religious
minorities. The new election law’s promising features were an increase in women
voters and the facilitation of registration of minorities. But despite the
law’s adoption, a subsequent election in Dir again saw women not being allowed
to vote. The war on terror and the problems created by it continue. EDs
occurred amongst other reasons when people were picked up for criticising the
military or advocating improved relations with India (e.g. Raza Khan, missing
since December 2017). The issue of EDs appears to have reached a dead end with
not much activity by the Commission of Inquiry on Enforced Disappearances
(CIED) and no progress. The new chilling factor is false charges of blasphemy
against dissenters and critics, a virtual death sentence at the hands of mob
vigilante violence, as was feared in the case of the five bloggers (and, one
might add, actually transpired in the case of Mashal Khan). Since no
prosecutions of the perpetrators of EDs has occurred, the HRCP Report argues for
signing the international covenants and criminalising EDs (it should be noted
however, that even now EDs are not legal, throwing up once again the yawning
gap between what is on our statute books and what transpires in practice on the
ground). The CIED received 868 cases in 2017 alone, more than the previous two
years. The CIED ‘located’ 555 persons of these but it is not clear whether they
were freed and reunited with their loved ones or not. The rest are still
missing. No personnel or state institutions have been prosecuted for acting in
violation of the Constitution and the law, reinforcing the sense of impunity of
those responsible for this reprehensible practice. The lifting of the
moratorium on the death penalty receives disapproval in the Report on principle
while the extension of the freedom of assembly to far right religious groups
alone, despite their nuisance value, comes in for some stick. The Report also
bemoans the decline in labour standards.
If the HRCP Report needed substantiation, this was
inadvertently supplied by the head of the CIED, Justice (retd) Javed Iqbal
while briefing the National Assembly Standing Committee on Human Rights.
Combining a strange mea culpa that smacked more of a deep state brief than the
considered views of a former Supreme Court judge, Justice Iqbal deflected questions
and potential criticism of the functioning of the CIED by mocking politicians,
a flavour-of-the-month pastime these days. With such an attitude, perhaps the
case is strengthened for the replacement of the head of CIED with someone
equally competent but less inclined to collaborate in hiding the blatantly
illegal activities of the deep state vis-à-vis EDs. Be that as it may, the HRCP
annual reports serve as an archive of the trajectory of human rights in
Pakistan. On that touchstone can be measured whether, and to what extent, human
and other rights have advanced or regressed since the reports started being compiled.
Judging at least from the 2017 Report, there is not much to crow about
regarding long-standing violations of human rights and arguably new forms of
such violations that visit us with each passing year.
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