Pakistan’s New Anti terror
Law Gives Security Forces Unprecedented Power
The law
permits the arrest of terror suspects without warrants and their detention for
60 days without trial. Officials will also be able to issue shoot-on-sight
orders
In an effort to curb the
increasing audacity of Islamist militant groups in the country, Pakistan’s
parliament passed a comprehensive counterterrorism bill on Wednesday that gives
unprecedented powers to domestic security forces.
The legislation, called the
Protection of Pakistan Bill 2014, has drawn the ire of human-rights groups for
its rigor and breadth. Under the new law, the national government can not only
arrest suspected terrorists without warrants but also detain them for 60 days
without any discussion of trial.
More controversially, it
permits police and other security officials to issue shoot-on-sight orders.
“This is perhaps the strongest
of the laws that Pakistan has come up with to deal with militancy and
terrorism,” Irfan Shahzad, a researcher at the Institute for Policy Studies in
Islamabad, tells TIME. “I would not say that outright it is a violation [of
human rights], but it certainly raises questions over what rights we Pakistanis
have as citizens of this country.”
Thousands have died since the
Pakistan Taliban began its present insurgency in 2007, and Islamabad has
frequently struggled to contain the bloodshed. It is currently taking the fight to the
insurgents in the mountainous region of North
Waziristan, but the offensive has sparked a humanitarian crisis, displacing
nearly half a million people.
Shahzad says the new
legislation has been born out of increasing frustration. “If a government fails
to deliver,” he says, “they resort to certain actions that they believe will
increase their command over certain groups.”
Among the provisions of the
new law are the granting to security forces the power to search premises
without warrants, the allowing of tapped phone calls as court evidence and a
steep increase in prison sentences for terrorist offenses. While the bill has
vocal critics, Shahzad believes that it will be accepted by a population
exhausted by years of conflict.
“We’re talking about a country
where the literacy rate is just over 50%,” he says. “Even among those who are
literate and who read the news, they are very much hard-pressed by the matter
of their own survival. [This law] may not necessarily be a major issue to
them.”
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