The Giglit
verdict and beyond, Mr Salim Haq
On November 25, 2014, the
anti-terrorism court in Gilgit delivered a judgment that has huge implications
for the Kashmir issue, but has unfortunately gone largely unnoticed in India.
The court sentenced
the owner of the Jang-GEO group Mir Shakeelur Rehman, host of GEO TV's morning
show "Utho Jago Pakistan" Shaista Lodhi, actress Veena Malik and her
husband Malik Asad to 26-year imprisonment and a fine of Rs 1.3 million each
for hurting religious sentiments. The show was broadcast in May 2014 and
featured Malik dancing with her husband while musicians sang a devotional song.
The judgment has
stunned the legal and political fraternity of Pakistan because it goes far
beyond the people involved in the case.
The verdict has
three dimensions:
Eminent legal
experts, including Aitzaz Ahsan, Akram Sheikh, Asma Jehangir, and the Supreme
Court Bar Association (SCBA) have criticized the judgment on legal grounds -
(a) The Gilgit-Baltistan courts have no jurisdiction outside that area and
cannot proceed against a citizen of Pakistan; (b) Pakistani courts have
dismissed 75 other FIRs against the accused in various places, including
Karachi where Geo is located; (c) Any issue relating to broadcast on the
electronic media can only be dealt with by PEMRA, the regulator, that had, in
fact, suspended GEO TV's license for one month over the blasphemy allegation;
(d) The judgment was awarded in absentia and without even hearing the accused.
This is illegal under several Supreme Court judgments and raises concerns about
the fairness of the trial; (e)
The same programme was broadcast by other
channels repeatedly - without facing any punishment.
If the judgment was
not bad enough in terms of law, it was worse as far as media freedom is
concerned and is being seen as a continuing attempt to silence free media,
especially GEO.
The bottom-line is
that the case having been dismissed in the courts of Pakistan, recourse was
taken to the more pliable court in Gilgit to punish the GEO/Jang group. The
anti-GEO forces have struck again, this time in the form of an anti-terrorist
court in Gilgit.
The verdict has
also drawn international condemnation with human rights organisations
expressing worry for media freedom in Pakistan as well as questioning the
fairness of the trial. Amnesty International said in a statement that the
sentence would have a chilling effect on the freedom of expression in Pakistan.
Finally, and
perhaps crucially, the judgment has put into focus the constitutional status or
lack thereof of Gilgit-Baltistan and again raised the issue of its
controversial legal status.
Former Chief
Justice of the POK High Court Abdul Majid Malik stated that the Gilgit Court
had no jurisdiction, as Gilgit-Baltistan is not a constitutional part of
Pakistan, adding, "Primarily Gilgit-Baltistan is the historic and
geographical part of Jammu and Kashmir state as accepted by Pakistan in the
United Nations and its acknowledgement by the UN resolutions on Kashmir
issue," he said. "But on the account of the delay in the settlement
of the Kashmir problem through plebiscite in the light of the UN resolutions,
it was deemed expedient by the government of Pakistan to give it a status under
the Pakistan President's Governance Ordinance, in 2009. Since then,
Gilgit-Baltistan is administered through its elected council, chief minister
and the governor."
Further, the
official spokesman of the government Federal Information Minister Pervez
Rasheed, in response to a question on the verdict, said that the jurisdiction
of the Pakistan Constitution does not extend to Gilgit-Baltistan. "The
jurisdiction of our constitution is not beyond Pakistan's boundaries",
Rasheed said.
All along, Pakistan
has been trying to convince the international community that the areas under
its control- Pakistan Occupied Kashmir, that includes so-called Azad Kashmir
and Gilgit-Baltistan, were settled issues because the people here had
voluntarily joined Pakistan. The only 'dispute' was about the area under Indian
control i.e Jammu and Kashmir.
The reaction of the
legal and political fraternity in Pakistan to the judgment clearly underlines
that the opaque status of these areas in that they have neither been merged
into Pakistan nor are they part of the territorial limits of the country.
The controversy now
raised thus puts paid to Pakistan's creeping efforts to absorb Gilgit-Baltistan
as its fifth province.
Internationally,
now whenever Pakistan takes up the issue of J-K, it will have to be reminded
that J-K includes the entire former princely state of J-K as it existed in
August 1947 and not only the portion with India.
Interestingly,
China has walked into this issue with a statement on Dec 02, 2014 describing
Gilgit-Baltistan in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) as "Pakistan's".
China has agreed to
build an ambitious economic corridor through the region linking Xinjiang to the
Pakistani port of Gwadar. The corridor, which includes a plan to expand the
Karakoram Highway and build a railway link through PoK, has been backed by Chinese
President Xi Jinping as part of his new "Silk Road economic belt" pet
project.
China would be just
as embarrassed as Pakistan with this verdict because it shows conclusively that
this massive investment is taking place in and though a territory that is not
even Pakistan's to begin with.
This should give
China a lot of food for thought.
The views expressed
in the above article are those of Mr Salim Haq. (ANI)
No comments:
Post a Comment