Human rights missing
Rashed Rahman
The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan’s (HRCP’s) annual report on the state of human rights in the country is always something to look forward to. It provides a check list of which areas of human rights continue repeatedly to be violated, as well as any new adventures in this direction. This year’s State of Human Rights in Pakistan 2025, albeit late, lives up to the high standards the HRCP has set itself and continues to adhere to. This is particularly significant at a time when constitutional, legal, political, fundamental, social and economic rights are increasingly conspicuous by their absence or seen to be under unremitting attack by the ruling elite and the state.
Repeated year after year are the HRCP’s lamentations regarding “severe contraction of civic space, the erosion of judicial independence, and deepening insecurity” felt by citizens across the board of political and social activists, journalists, and even lawyers. Among the areas causing deep alarm is the shrinking space for freedom of expression. The Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act (PECA) has morphed into a hammer to knock out not just mainstream media but also social media. An Imaan Hazir-Mazari and her husband can now be sentenced to 17 years in prison for, believe it or not, a tweet. Dr Mahrang Baloch, leading the movement for accountability of missing persons in Balochistan is left to rot in jail while her case is interminably delayed. Sheema Kermani and women comrades of the Aurat March can be arrested and maltreated to prevent them holding a press conference at the Karachi Press Club! The red-faced measures against responsible police officers and apology by a Sindh minister does not wipe out the shame of such degenerated state actions.
But these examples are the barest tip of a huge iceberg threatening the Titanic called the state of Pakistan. One cannot ignore the atmosphere of fear and trepidation that has enveloped the minds and hearts of citizens committed to a democratic system. In fact, PECA twists and the Anti-Terrorism Act’s changes to allow indefinite preventive detention smack of a fascist order, not a democratic one by any stretch of the imagination. So perhaps it is time we woke up to this fact and sloughed off our illusions about what kind of system we live under. Bolstering the showcase window of a civilian elected government is the by now obvious hand of the military establishment. So much for the glimmer of hope offered for a democratic transition when the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz and the Pakistan People’s Party signed and adhered temporarily to the Charter of Democracy they signed while their respective leaders were in exile. The only known instance of a transition from the rule of one party to another through a fair and free exercise of the people’s mandate (2013) turned on its head when these two parties unquestioningly accepted the present set-up in order to revenge themselves for Imran Khan’s treatment of them when he was in power.
Pakistan’s tragedy can be summed up in a few words. We are still in a fight for democracy, including human rights. HRCP is one of the few credible platforms that has stood consistently for these principles over decades. But now even the flawed legal recourse in which the hopes of the many wronged, including the families of missing persons, resided, seems hopelessly out of reach. The 27thAmendment is only the latest bludgeon in a long and steady erosion of the hope for justice in the courts. Judges with conscience who complain of pressures for favoured judgments are summarily transferred. A new court, the Federal Constitutional Court, has raised questions about the status of the Supreme Court as a result of two apex courts gifted to us!
The state of the economy has taken a toll of the poor and even the middle class. People appear without hope or certainty about the future. The tragedy of our youth bulge wondering what the future in Pakistan holds for them is indescribable. Those who have given up hope of any improvement are unfortunately unable to feel the lava of popular resentment bubbling beneath the surface of apparent calm. History may yet surprise them. When and how is difficult to predict, but Pakistan’s people are not going to take this anomalous, impossible existence lying down forever. Beware the Ides of March.
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