The Human Rights Trends of 2009 in Pakistan

In 2009 Pakistan was tempted to violate human rights, claims Human Rights Watch in its 20th Annual Report 2010, the Human Rights Trends of 2009. Including Pakistan, the report offers summarized details of human rights conditions and violations in more than 90 countries and territories worldwide.

The report says that Pakistan was one of the countries that blocked access to independent experts and rapporteurs from the UN Human Rights machinery.

The UN rapporteurs work independent of governments and have recognized competence in the field of human rights. They regularly conduct fact finding missions to investigate allegations of human rights violations. They visit on two accounts: one, if a government invites them; and two, rapporteurs themselves write to the concerned government of the country from where they received authentic appeals and reports regarding human rights violations perpetrated by the government. Although the report keeps the names of appellant and victims anonymous, the fact that the Government of Pakistan refuses to cooperate alone is sufficient to suggest that the government has a guilty conscience.

In the name of war against terrorism or extremism, Pakistan’s response to militant attacks regularly violated basic rights. Across the country, particularly in conflict zones in Swat and tribal areas, hundreds of suspects were detained mainly without charges; or, if charged, often were convicted without a fair trail. Majority of these suspects were kept in two different facilities one in Swat and other somewhere in the province. Independent UN monitors had no access to the most of the detainees. The interior Ministry of Pakistan estimated that 1100 people had disappeared during Musharaf era, but from the scale and secrecy of counterterrorism operations in the country, the number of disappeared people seems very small. Although the Zardari administration had vowed to resolve the issue but not only has it made insignificant progress, it has also not signed the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance 2006. The military operations in Swat and the tribal areas also resulted in a massive displacement crisis, as some two million civilians fled the fighting areas to adjoining ones. It was an abrupt displacement, because the Pakistan forces besieged the areas without prior intimation to the residents.

In October 2009, the government amended the Anti Terrorism Act and restricted the legal rights of terror suspects by increasing the duration of preventive detention from a period of 30 days to 90 days, without benefit of judicial review or the right to bail. Under the act, the confessions made by the suspects before the police or military were equal to final evidence.

Pakistan alleged that drone missile attacks carried out by the United States since September 2008 on suspected militant hideouts in Pakistan’s tribal areas, killing hundred of civilians and alleged militants, were violating the international laws of war. But Pakistan did not provide access to independent monitors to assess the validity of allegations.

In October 2009 United Nations on Extrajudicial Executions reported to the UN General Assembly that the US government’s no-response to the specific questions about the drone attacks strengthens the perceptions that the US was “carrying out indiscriminate killings in violation of international law.”

The report acknowledges the government for restorating the ousted Supreme Court’s Chief Justice of Pakistan; taking a major step forward by admitting the human rights violations against Baloch people, including disappearance of hundreds of Baloch; amending Section 509 of the Pakistan Penal Code in order to penalize sexual harassment of women at any public and private workplace, or in public spaces; and in the National Assembly passing the Domestic Violence (Prevention and Protection) Bill in August 2009 which would prevent violence against women and children through quick criminal trials and a chain of protection committees and protection officers.

The report considered Pakistan Supreme Court’s a ruling in July a positive development in which Hijras (male-to-female transgender individuals) were provided equal protection of law and funds for their community welfare. It further said that the allocation of US$425 millions to launch the Benazir Income Support Program was the country’s first social protection program for supporting the poorest 15 percent of the population.

The report highlighted that journalists continued to face pressure and threats from elements within Pakistan’s intelligence apparatus and non-state actors. At the same time, religious minorities faced hardships under the Blasphemy Law, and attacks on them continued. Kerry Lugar Bill, the presence of Black Water, the infamous US based security company, in the country soaring inflation, commutation of death penalty and investigation into the 2007 assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto were also the areas of concerns for the report.

The report misses to mention a number of other serious human rights violations in Pakistan, and its inability to take preventive measures.

After the ratification of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) in 1990, Pakistan has yet not implemented or sufficiently implemented the relevant provisions of the convention. Thousands of children became victim of violence, sexual and physical abuse and millions were deprived of basic rights, protection, shelter and care. The Trial Courts all over Pakistan continued to sentence hundreds of children rigorous imprisonment without taking into account the guarantees given to them under the section 12 of the Juvenile Justice System Ordinance 2000 which states that no child “shall” be ordered to labour and given any corporal punishment during the time spent in custody or any Borstal or such other institution.

In Indian jails about 1,016 Pakistani prisoners including 300 fishermen are currently detained, while there are 625 Indian fishermen and 66 other Indians citizens in Pakistani jails. Many of these detainees on both sides have completed their sentences but still remain behind bars, and subjected to torture and abuse. Indeed, it has fast become a tit for tat game between the two countries.

According to the National Aliens Registration Authority (NARA) 2.5 million to 3 million Bengali-origin immigrants are living in different settlements of Karachi. Only a handful of them may have been leading a respectful life, while the rest of the Bengali community is devoid of basic socioeconomic and political rights. They live in an environment of insecurity and pressure, and pass through humiliating procedures from the time of registration to finding any work in the country. At the same time, target killings of political activists of MQM Haqiqi, MQM Haq Parast, PPP, ANP, JSQM and other nationalist parties workers was absent in the report.

Besides, the report does not dwell on blood feuds the in rural areas of Pakistan, some of which have been declared as ‘no-go areas’ for a common person. Herein lies judicial and administrative apathy to eliminate these feuds.

Other than what the HRW report has not mentioned in the context of Pakistan, it, however, is very important report of 2009 which seeks to expose anti human rights trends in Pakistan, asses threats being posed to human rights movements in the country, and calls for reversing those trends. This report further urges government to ensure the safety of human rights defenders by eliminating elements that are violently opposed to human rights movement. By Abdullah Khoso