The cost of criticizing the military in
Pakistan, Imaan Mazari-Hazir
Either the State is
complicit, which is perhaps the most likely scenario, or it is simply
incompetent, which is just as alarming. Either way, the people of Pakistan
deserve answers.
Martin
Luther King said, “We must build dikes of courage to hold back the flood of
fear”. In Pakistan, those journalists, activists and students who have
chosen to act with great courage to criticize the unlawful conduct of the
military, vis-à-vis illegal abductions, torture, murder, oppression and
corruption, find themselves and their families in the midst of horrifying and
dangerous circumstances.
In
the last few months alone, almost every major newspaper has covered stories
from Pakistan of journalists, bloggers and students either being abducted and
tortured or beaten in broad daylight by “unknown” assailants. This is not
the first time Pakistan has been confronted with the phenomenon of enforced
disappearances. After all, under military dictator Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan
agreed to abduct, torture and effectively sell its citizens to the United
States under the policy of extraordinary renditions.
Investigative
journalist Taha Siddiqui was the most recent target of an attempted abduction
in the Federal Capital. En route to the airport to catch a flight to London,
Siddiqui was dragged out of a cab, beaten to a pulp and threatened by around a
dozen armed men. His passport, phone, laptop and other personal belongings were
confiscated by the armed men but miraculously, Siddiqui, through his
determination to live, managed to escape. What was the crime for
which he was meted out such unlawful treatment? One need only scroll through
his social media posts and articles in local and international papers to see he
was one of the most vocal critics of the Pakistani military establishment.
Just
a few weeks earlier, a social media activist, Raza Khan, was abducted in Lahore
following a meeting organized by him to discuss the right-wing takeover of the
capital by Islamic fundamentalists. Last year, at least four human rights
activists/bloggers (namely, Waqas Goraya, Asim Saeed, Salman Haider and Ahmed
Raza Naseer) were abducted, detained and tortured by the security agencies.
What all these people have in common is the choice of institution they
criticized: the military establishment.
Will everyone who speaks up against the misuse
of authority by the military establishment be subjected to enforced
disappearances and torture?
In
all these cases of abductions, Pakistan saw the same rhetoric we have been
hearing over the last many decades to justify unlawful conduct by state
agencies. Paid social media accounts and suspect journalists with ties to the
establishment have done everything in their power to launch dangerous and
slanderous campaigns against all these individuals. The four activists
abducted in 2017 were accused of blasphemy – a charge for which no trial is ever
needed: there is an automatic death sentence by the masses (as we saw in the
case of Mashal Khan, a university student falsely accused of blasphemy who
was murdered on his campus). No action is ever taken against those who level
such false allegations, nor are the mobs who engage in such violence ever
punished by the State.
With
regard to Siddiqui, while he has thus far been able to avoid the fate of those
who are accused of blasphemy, he has been accused of staging his own abduction
allegedly to seek asylum in the West. The persons who launch such vicious
attacks would have you believe that every single critic of the military is
either foreign-funded or has some ulterior motive. Some have even gone so far
as to argue that the State has a right to illegally abduct those who criticize
it. Those who dissent in Pakistan are not only punished for dissenting at the
hand of state agencies: they are also ridiculed, mocked, ostracized and
threatened by society either for surviving the ordeal inflicted upon them or
for speaking up against such tactics.
The
cost of speaking up against the military in Pakistan, it now seems, is too high
a cost for many to bear. Threats to the lives of dissenters and their families
are not only common but those who so threaten do so with complete impunity. There are no
consequences. In fact, these attacks occur on such a regular basis now that it
has become crystal clear that the State’s security agencies fear no
accountability for these violations of the Constitution and international law.
The
Committee for the Protection of Journalists has deemed Pakistan one of the most
dangerous places for journalists. One would just like to highlight that the
practice of enforced disappearances doesn’t only affect journalists but
includes as a potential target literally any individual who dares to criticize
the Pakistani military establishment. We live in strangely ironic times: on one
hand, the military establishment leeches off the budget and claims it is one of
the most superior intelligence agencies in the world, while, on the other hand,
such abductions and murders are rampant. Either the State is complicit, which is
perhaps the most likely scenario, or it is simply incompetent, which is just as
alarming. Either way, the people of Pakistan deserve answers. Will anyone
who speaks up against the misuse of authority by the military establishment be
subjected to enforced disappearances and torture? Will those who are lucky
enough to survive ever see justice being done against those who perpetrated
these heinous attacks against them?
In
October last year, senior journalist, Ahmad Noorani (another vocal critic of
the establishment) was beaten in broad daylight by “unknown” attackers.
Following the attack, the Director General of the Inter Services Public
Relations (ISPR) sent the journalist a bouquet of flowers and voiced his “full
support” to “catch culprits and bring them to justice”. Operating with
complete impunity has allowed the security agencies to not only violate the law
but act like a callous mafia that first attempts to murder people and then
sends them a box of chocolates which might as well come with a note that says,
“we hope you have learnt your lesson”. When has action ever been taken
against those involved in these enforced disappearances? Many of these “missing
persons” remain missing – their families have no idea whether they are dead or
alive.
We
deserve better. Pakistan deserves better. If someone has committed a crime, the
State must produce them before a court of law but this culture of impunity has
to end.
Lawyer
pursuing her Masters in International Law at the University of Vienna.
The
writer is a lawyer
Published
in Daily Times, January 20th 2018.
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