PAKISTAN: Safe Haven for Rapists in Uniform, says Asian Human Rights Commission

A Statement by the Asian Human Rights Commission

PAKISTAN: Safe Haven for Rapists in Uniform
Pakistani women, be they young or old, or even dead or alive, suffer rape by perverted elements that use rape as a tool to suppress and oppress half of the country’s population. One cannot fathom the moral bankruptcy of a society where a rape occurs every two hours. Going by the statistics, each day 12 women suffer rape in the “land of the pure”. It is not simply a matter of blaming a proportion of perverts in a society, when State functionaries are themselves indulging in rape with abandon.

That rape is endemic in a country where Islam is the ideology seems oxymoronic. And, the way it is addressed is only making matters worse. Pakistani society, by and large, treats incidents of rape as a hush-hush affair to be swept under the carpet. The response to atrocities is to banish them from consciousness. Thus, many women are forced to suffer in silence. It beats common sense that you can get raped, but can’t speak about in a conservative society like Pakistan. No woman dares to approach a police station to report this crime for fear of further shaming and potential abuse by the police officials themselves.

Rape is the most common form of custodial torture against accused women. Law enforcement officials also force the accused to confess to a crime by raping his female relative in front of him, i.e. rape is used as a means of torture. Many women are also raped as a result of vendetta against their male relatives. Some women are simply kidnapped by law enforcement officials from their homes or the streets and raped. Despite the reality, torture and ill-treatment of women in custody has received scant attention from legislators and adjudicators alike. No specific law exists to penalize such heinous crimes.

Recently, on 6 April 2016, Station House Officer (SHO) Digri Police Station, Badin District, Sindh Province, picked up a 20-year-old mentally challenged woman from her home. Later, on the victim’s complaint of rape, an FIR (No. 42) was registered against Digri SHO Mohammad Aslam Jamali, under Section 376 of the Pakistan Penal Code. Jamali was suspended and later arrested. However, with the help of his colleague, he managed to escape from police custody in Mirpurkhas District of Sindh Province.

Proving rape is in itself a difficult task. However, when the law enforcement agencies are involved in such crimes, it becomes next to impossible for the victim to seek and attain redress. Even in most of the cases that garnered media attention, the matter was hushed-up after the initial hullabaloo and media frenzy.

The cases of Dr. Shazia Khalid and Uzma Ayub, highlight the extremely insecure environment in which women of Pakistan are compelled to live, one where the custodians of law turn predators and commit sexual violence. Both the victims were raped by military personnel and were later forced to flee the country. In an interview, Shazia said, “I did not get justice and I will regret that for the rest of my life”.

When asked to comment on Dr. Shazia’s case by a reporter of The Washington Post, General Pervez Musharraf, the then President of Pakistan, unabashedly stated that claiming rape has become a “moneymaking concern” in Pakistan and that many Pakistanis felt it was an easy way to make money and get a Canadian visa.

Loot and rape has become an everyday affair for the citizens of the country. On 3 September 2015, six policemen raped a 22-year-old for three days while keeping her intoxicated. The victim later told the police that Constable Shahzad Warraich, along with Zulfiqar and his four accomplices, kidnapped her at gunpoint. She said that the accused took her to a hotel and continually raped her after administering intoxicants. She alleged that the accused had also snatched gold ornaments worth Rupees 1,50,000 from her.

Heartbroken and dismayed many victims resort to self-immolation as a mean to protest and escape the injustice. On 22 October 2015 a 20-year old woman from Multan in Punjab Province set herself on fire when the police refused to register a case of rape against three police officers. On her deathbed she testified that three policemen raped her. The officers were arrested after the woman's death began receiving local news attention.

The delay in registration of the case not only gives impunity to the perpetrator it also allows time for the evidence to vanish thus making it impossible to prove rape. Delay in judicial proceeding is another hurdle faced by the victim. The conviction rate of rapists is zero in Pakistan, making the country a safe haven for rapists. Many cases of rape are settled outside of court, where the perpetrator is allowed to go scot free, or gets away by paying peanuts in the name of compensation to the aggrieved family of the victim.

In Uzma Ayub’s case, the perpetrator of rape, a military man, told Uzma that they would pay her whatever compensation she required. She refused any offer of settlement. The influential elders of the area, who were acting as arbitrators between Uzma and the alleged rapist, were forced by the police to pressurize the victim for settlement. Upon her refusal to accept compensation, she was threatened and harassed.

Under administrative jurisprudence, an act of a State functionary amounts to the act of the State itself and the State is responsible to protect and compensate its citizen if he or she is victimized by such actions. However, there is no semblance of the rule of law in Pakistan and so the State feels no duty towards its citizens. The status quo in the garb of democracy is perpetuating and unleashing terror upon citizens by giving unbridled impunity to the guardians of law. This State-sanctioned violence against women and sex-discrimination by law enforcement authorities is a denial of the fundamental right of access to justice to women.

The persistence of violence against women in Pakistan highlights the failure of the judicial system, which is affected by a strong feudal system, religious and social taboos, traditions, customs, a homogeneous religious society, a vast gender gap, a monstrous policing system, and sexual discrimination in economic and social activities.

# # #

The Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) works towards the radical rethinking and fundamental redesigning of justice institutions in order to protect and promote human rights in Asia. Established in 1984, the Hong Kong based organisation is a Laureate of the Right Livelihood Award, 2014.

Read this Statement online

Visit our website with more features at www.humanrights.asia.

Pakistan’s Premier Leaves the Country Amid Panama Papers Scandal

Pakistan’s Premier Leaves the Country Amid Panama Papers Scandal

By SALMAN MASOOD       APRIL 14, 2016

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Speculation about the political fate of Pakistan’s embattled prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, was swirling on Thursday after he left the country in the middle of an unfolding scandal over his family’s offshore wealth.

Opposition politicians have pressed Mr. Sharif to resign after the so-called Panama Papers document leak revealed that three of his children controlled shell companies through which they owned expensive residential properties in London. Demands have picked up for a judicial commission under the country’s chief justice to investigate any potential wrongdoing by the prime minister and his family.

Mr. Sharif has rejected any allegations of money laundering, claiming that his children have legitimate business abroad, and he has signaled his willingness to establish an inquiry commission.

But as the political turmoil increased, Mr. Sharif flew to London on Wednesday for cardiac medical treatment that he described as a checkup. The timing of the visit immediately prompted rumors that Mr. Sharif might not return to Pakistan until investigations were completed.

In his absence, the finance minister, Ishaq Dar, is leading important cabinet meetings this week. However, government officials said that Mr. Sharif will return on Sunday, and will face the crisis.

Mr. Sharif, 66, an affluent businessman whose family has made its money through businesses primarily dealing in steel, returned to power in 2013 after his party won a majority in the general elections. He had been also been prime minister in the 1990s and was ousted in a military coup in 1999.

Mr. Sharif has tried to assert civilian control over the government but has run into difficulties with the powerful military, which has again become ascendant in both foreign and domestic affairs in recent months and commands a deep well of public support.

On Thursday, Imran Khan, the most trenchant political opponent of Mr. Sharif, also arrived in London. Mr. Khan said he was looking to hire financial investigation agencies that could look into the Sharif family’s dealings.

Mr. Khan has threatened to lead street protests if an investigation is not initiated by the government.

Some political analysts here say that the major opposition political parties do not want the crisis to reach the point at which the military might step in.

But the Panama Papers leak has undeniably lent momentum to Mr. Khan at a time when he had seemed politically weakened. He led thousands of his supporters and staged a sit-in outside the Parliament in 2014, accusing Mr. Sharif of rigging the last general elections. That effort to bring down Mr. Sharif fizzled, but Mr. Khan is taking this as a second chance.

“This is a godsend opportunity for us,” Mr. Khan said last week, urging Pakistanis to rise against Mr. Sharif.

Another mainstream political power, the Pakistan Peoples Party, has so far seemed to be weighing its options, and there has been no major joining of forces with Mr. Khan. Analysts say the party may be looking to cut a deal with Mr. Sharif.

“They are trying to find some kind of political agreement to deal with the current crisis,” said Hasan Askari Rizvi, a prominent political analyst based in Lahore.

Mr. Rizvi said Mr. Sharif is expected to return to the country soon. “He is not threatened to that extent,” he said. “However, if all political parties join hands, then Nawaz is in real trouble.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/15/world/asia/nawaz-sharif-leaves-pakistan-panama-papers-scandal.html?_r=0

Pakistani Spies May Have Funded 2009 Suicide Bombing Targeting CIA Outpost

Pakistani Spies May Have Funded 2009 Suicide Bombing Targeting CIA Outpost     BY ELIAS GROLL     APRIL 13, 2016

Pakistan’s powerful spy agency may have provided the funding for a deadly 2009 suicide attack on a CIA base in Afghanistan that ranks as one of the deadliest days in the agency’s history, according to a newly declassified State Department cable.

The heavily redacted cable, sent about two weeks after the attack on Dec. 30, 2009, reports on a meeting between operatives belonging to the Haqqani network, a highly capable al Qaeda-linked terror group, and unidentified officers with Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence. According to the cable, which was released Wednesday, the ISI was suspected of giving the Haqqani network $200,000 to “enable” the attack on Forward Operating Base Chapman in Afghanistan’s Khost province.

The Chapman attack killed seven CIA officers and a Jordanian intelligence operative. It was carried out by a double agent, a Jordanian named Hammam Khalil Mohammed, who was invited onto the base to help the agency track down senior al Qaeda operatives. When he blew himself up during a meeting with senior CIA officials responsible for hunting al Qaeda, he greatly hindered Langley’s effort to dismantle the terror network. 

While Pakistan’s ISI has a well-known record of supporting Islamist militant groups, its funding of the Chapman attack remains unconfirmed. The cable notes that it is an “information report” and “not finally evaluated intelligence.” The CIA did not answer questions Wednesday about the report’s veracity, or whether stronger intelligence proves that the ISI funded the Chapman bombing.

The National Security Archive at George Washington University published the cable, which was part of a trove of documents received under a Freedom of Information Act request.

Another State Department cable, also published Wednesday, reported that leaders of the Haqqani network were suspected of meeting monthly with the ISI in Islamabad as of late December 2009 — around the time of the Chapman bombing. The ISI provided the Haqqani network during these meetings with an “unknown amount of funding” for “unspecified operations,” the cable reported.

In December 2009, the ISI and Haqqani network met twice, according to thatcable. During the first meeting, they “discussed funding for operations” in Khost province. During the second, ISI provided “direction to the Haqqanis to expedite attack preparations and lethality in Afghanistan.”

Other documents published by the National Security Archive give new insights into the Haqqani funding sources.

The ISI has a long history of playing both sides in America’s long war against radical Islamist groups in the tribal areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Anticipating an eventual American withdrawal from Afghanistan, Islamabad has cultivated close ties with Afghan militants, providing them with funds and arms.

Pakistani intelligence officials believe their relationship with Afghan militants, such as the Haqqani network and the Afghan Taliban, provides Islamabad with a decisive advantage in its contest with India, Pakistan’s historic enemy, for influence in Afghanistan.

At the same time, Pakistan has accepted billions of dollars in military and humanitarian aid from the United States after helping Washington combat Islamist terror groups following the 9/11 terror attacks.

Pakistani armed forces are carrying out an offensive in the country’s tribal areas against the Pakistani Taliban, which has been responsible for a spate of recent deadly bombings. Just last month, a splinter group of the Pakistani Taliban killed more than 70 people in an Easter bombing targeting Christians celebrating in Lahore.

http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/04/13/pakistani-spies-may-have-funded-2009-suicide-bombing-targeting-cia-outpost/

The war of ideology, by Nighat Kamal Aziz

Life was so simple when wars were fought with bravery and chivalry; when the enemy was across the border. There was a time when the brunt of the battle was taken by armies facing each other, not by children in schools or playing in parks accompanied by their mothers.

Those fighting prided themselves on giving their enemies an equal chance to defend themselves. Shooting someone in the back was an act of cowardice. There was a code of honour, which protected children and unarmed people because it was considered disgraceful to harm them.

But the war game has changed. The enemy is within now. The white and black have merged into grey. It is a war of ideologies, fought in the minds. The enemy can be anyone; it is difficult to decipher who is in which camp. The conventional code of conduct in war is misplaced and conventional weapons are inadequate. We are pitted against those who do not play by the rules. For them, striking where it hurts most is important – code of honour be damned.

There was a time when being religious made a person magnanimous, kind and humane; when religion broadened the mind, instead of making people blood thirsty and intolerant. Those who were well-versed in religion had the grace and patience to listen to differing points of view. They won people over with sound arguments, instead of acting as judge, jury and executioner, killing those who dared to disagree.

It was not a very distant past when everyone gave alms with open hearts for religious reasons. Now, people are wary, wondering if their donations will be used to harbour or train potential suicide bombers. There was a time when the soft-spoken clergy commanded respect and admiration instead of fear; when religion was not used as a garb for the lust for power. The clergy have become rigid, their sermons increasingly harsh and intolerant. Can they command respect when they spring into action against domestic violence bills or in support of child marriages, but remain silent when children get blown up?

Where has the era gone, when Christians, Parsees, Sikhs and Hindus coexisted peacefully as equal citizens in this land, contributing positively to our nation? They lent essence to life and justified the white in our flag. Of course, the Shias and Sunnis argued heatedly about their viewpoints, but they did not silence each other with guns.

People lived in their own spheres when religion was not predominant. Faith was an inner glow, not to be thrust down the other’s throat. People believed all religions were like rivulets, basically flowing down to the same ocean. Everyone had the right to choose which river to float in. They could consider their river better, but not force others to join in. Religion was like a halo, making people tolerant and not heartless barbarians.

It is unclear when and how things changed so drastically for the worse. How has so much intolerance, hatred and violence crept into our lives? The transformation was swift and we remained silent and helpless spectators. Silence and inaction appears harmless but causes the worst damage over time. Brushing problems under the carpet, hoping that they will disappear and not upholding what is right create worse complications.

Christians have been killed in churches, Parsees have quietly left the country, the Ahmadis’ houses have been burnt, Hazaras have been killed, innocent people have been blown up, hospitals and funerals have been targeted and people have been lynched by mobs. All in the name of religion.

And our silence has been deafening.

When justice is not dispensed indiscriminately and quickly, the repercussions are far-reaching. The war of ideology can only won when people are not judgmental, with pre-conceived views. Perhaps we have lost our will to listen. Perhaps we have become so rigid in our self-righteousness that we cannot tolerate anyone who does not agree with us. Perhaps we are terrified to stand up and defend what is right because we fear dangerous repercussions.

And perhaps we are not wrong.

But does closing our eyes solve our problems? Does it make our children safe when they venture out for ice cream?

The dreaded Third World War is upon us. The war of ideology is enveloping the world. Conventional forces can delay it, but cannot eradicate it. Each person needs to stand by what is right, to overcome their fear and speak their mind.

We need to protect innocent victims, regardless of their religion. We need to isolate those fanning the flames of hatred.

Our people have turned into mindless robots, following any Pied Piper’s frenzied speeches. Have they lost their power of reasoning, or do they lack anything substantial to do?

Differing points of view should be expressed in a civilised manner. Resorting to violence and destroying public and private property is counterproductive. The moral high ground can only be achieved with intelligent reasoning, not pressure tactics.

Intelligent reasoning needs to be cultivated by our scholars, politicians, clergy and media. It needs to be imbibed in our students and our people. The first step is to be a good listener, because people are entitled to their views.

Email: nigiaziz7@hotmail.com

http://www.thenews.com.pk/print/112015-The-war-of-ideology

How the Army generals nixed India Pakistan peace, once again

How the Army generals nixed India Pakistan peace, once again

The truth behind Basit’s comments is depressing: Pakistan’s army has staged what can only be described as a foreign policy coup, rejecting Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s efforts to seek normalisation with India.

Last week, in remarks unlikely to endear him to political leaders on either side of the border, Islamabad’s envoy to New Delhi, Abdul Basit, announced that the “peace process with India has been suspended”.

The truth behind Basit’s comments is depressing: Pakistan’s army has staged what can only be described as a foreign policy coup, rejecting Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s efforts to seek normalisation with India. Sharif’s promise to act against the Jaish-e-Muhammad after it staged the attack on the IAF base in Pathankot appears to have been the decisive moment of rupture.

Ever since 2014, Sharif’s foreign policy has been drawning sustained fire from Pakistan’s all-powerful army, who have cast India as an existential threat. The generals’ polemical weapons have included Kashmir, purported Indian backing for terrorism in Pakistan and, most recently, the bizarre case of alleged Indian intelligence operative Kulbhushan Jadhav — a former naval officer whose rambling confession was played on Pakistani television, but against whom no criminal charges have yet been filed.

The underlying message is simple: though the army will countenance accommodation with India in order to avoid crises that are not in its interest, it is unwilling to move forward on actual normalisation.

In part, this decision is pragmatic. Faced with threats from anti-state jihadists, the Pakistan army sees anti-India jihadists as necessary sources of legitimacy and support. The generals believe Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government is just as unwilling to risk war as its predecessors, fearful of undoing its wider strategic goal of high growth. Thus, anti-India jihadist operations, like those in Gurdaspur or Pathankot, can be permitted at little or no risk to Pakistan’s military.

For Indian policymakers, though, there is a larger challenge. The army, as C Christine Fair has argued, is an epistemic community, whose decision making is shaped by inherited knowledge. For the Pakistan army, normalisation with India is indeed an existential threat — because the battle against the bigger neighbour is a core part of its founding myth that casts it as the defender of an Islamic Pakistan against a predatory, Hindu India.

The roots of this thinking lie in the late 1940s, when Pakistan army officers fought alongside tribal irregulars in an effort to seize Kashmir. Brigadier Akbar Khan, who led the campaign, believed the war for Kashmir had been betrayed by an effete political leadership.

Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan found himself ceding a growing share of power to General Ayub Khan. In 1953, during anti-Ahmadiyya riots in Punjab, the army established itself as the principal source of state authority. It cast itself as a modernising institution, but did not resist the Islamist tide. Pakistan’s first Constitution, passed in 1956, declared Pakistan an Islamic republic — a notion unknown to classical theology — and mandated no laws repugnant to the Koran and Hadith be passed.

Gen Khan’s military coup was widely hailed in the West, and many saw him as a moderniser determined to rein in both the rowdy mullahs and the communists. Samuel Huntington saw the general’s idea of Basic Democracy — a project to radically limit democracy — as a “prerequisite of political stability in a modernising country”. He cast Ayub as “a Solon or Lycurgus or Great Legislator on the Platonic or Rousseauian model”.

For all his secular-modernising claims, Ayub’s conception of Pakistan had a specific Islamist impulse. In an article for Foreign Policy, he approvingly quoted the rightwing ideologue and poet Muhammad Iqbal’s observation that “the State, from the Islamic standpoint is an endeavour to transform these [religious] ideals into space-time forces, an aspiration to realize them in a definite human organisation.

“It is this sort of human organisation,” Ayub said, “that Pakistan aspires to become”.

Pakistani secularism, such as it was, disintegrated in 1973 — the Constitution brought into force that year decreed that “sovereignty over the entire Universe belongs to Almighty Allah alone”. The state was, among other things, enjoined to promote “observance of the Islamic moral standards”. The army did not resist — and in 1977, General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq set about entrenching these tendencies.

Zia commended to his officers Brigadier S K Malik’s The Quranic Conception of War, noting its contribution to the “understanding that we jointly seek as citizens of an Islamic state”. “The term jihad,” Malik wrote, “so often confused with military strategy is, in fact, the near-equivalent of total or grand strategy or policy in-execution”. Thus, jihad “aims at attaining the overall mission assigned to the Islamic state”.

Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto chose not to roll back the religious legislation; in 1998, her successor, Nawaz Sharif, even considered legislation that would have declared him the ‘Amir ul-momineen’, or Commander of the Faithful — a title used by the medieval Caliphs, and the Taliban commander Mullah Muhammad Omar.

In the army, Zia’s ideas shaped official discourse all the way to General Raheel Sharif, on whose watch jihadists have been attacked not for what they are, but as agents of India.

For India, the truth is that there are no good options. The last major gains in the India-Pakistan relationship were won through war, not dialogue. The LoC ceasefire, and the post-2003 reduction of violence in Kashmir, came about as a consequence of the war of 1999 and the near-war of 2001-2002 — a crisis that India could barely afford, but which almost broke Pakistan. These are not templates, however, for securing India’s ends: the potential risks are simply too high.

In New Delhi, strategists argue that the only alternative is talking. Engagement, the argument goes, ensures that the complex elements of Pakistan’s polity — Islamists hostile to the state, politicians seeking to undermine military primacy, a fledgling industrial bourgeoisie seeking regional economic opportunity — do not ally against an existential threat from India. Then, they argue, it makes sense for India to not subvert its own overarching strategic aim of high growth to be derailed by war.

But it is for these precise reasons that Pakistan’s generals are certain to ensure that any process of India-Pakistan normalisation goes nowhere — and to ratchet up the pain when it serves their interests, secure in their belief that India will not retaliate.

praveen.swami@expressindia.com

http://indianexpress.com/article/explained/india-pakistan-talks-abdul-basit-india-pak-peace-in-fact-how-the-generals-nixed-india-pak-peace-once-again/

Panama Papers Leave Pakistani PM Nawaz Sharif in a Jam, Umair Jamal

Panama Papers Leave Pakistani PM Nawaz Sharif in a Jam, Umair Jamal

April 10, 2016

With the Panama Papers, Nawaz Sharif’s legitimacy on matters of national security will continue to decline.

The scale of tax avoidance and money laundering revealed in the Panama Paper leaks run into the several hundreds of billions of dollars and contains the details and names of hundreds of powerful and influential people from across the world. The impact of these revelations is already visible: mass protests in Iceland have forced the country’s prime minister into resignationafter disclosures about his offshore dealings became public through these leaks.

The names of over 200 Pakistanis, including the current prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, have also figured in these leaks. Allegations of tax evasion, fraud, and money laundering have marred Sharif’s political career since the beginning. The Independent in 1998 published a piece which stated, “The investigation into Mr. Sharif and his family was originally commissioned in 1993 by an interim government, after Mr. Sharif’s dismissal as prime minister, which asked the agency to investigate 13 separate allegations of corruption and money laundering through overseas bank accounts.”

According to these leaks, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s close family has made millions of dollars of investments in a number of offshore companies. Just hours after these revelations, Sharif addressed the nationand promised appropriate review while denying that any of his family members were involved in any kind of corruption.

Even after coming to power with a heavy mandate, Sharif has not been able to rule successfully. The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Isnaaf party’s four-month long protests in Islamabad in 2014, which ended only after the military’s intervention as a mediator, took away any semblance of civilian supremacy over the army. A few weeks ago, the former military chief, Pervez Musharraf, who was put on an historic trial for treason by Sharif, silently left the country.

For the prime minister, the timing of these allegations could not have been worse. The PTI again has promised to launch another wave of protests against the federal government if it fails to form an independent commission to prosecute the allegations made in Panama leaks. Meanwhile, the army has unilaterally launched a military operation in Punjab without even asking for consent from the provincial government, which is run by the prime minister’s younger brother, Shahbaz Sharif.

The prime minister has proved to be an ordinary politician: one who has has neither courage nor the political will to provide leadership to the country. “Nawaz Sharif has frittered away his opportunities. He has proved to be a hopelessly incompetent leader, neither strong enough to initiate badly needed reforms nor sophisticated enough to deal with the country’s well-oiled military machine,” said Ahmad Rashid.

For the most part, Sharif’s third tenure as prime minister has been marred by allegations of mass corruption. Moreover, Sharif has been soft on extremists. Consequently, the leadership space left by the prime minister has been filled by the chief of army staff, General Raheel Sharif, who has been tough on extremism. While the military chief ordered the execution of Mumtaz Qadri, who in 2011 murdered Punjab Governor Salmaan Taseer, the federal government a week ago could not clear the capital of a handful of Islamist protesters celebrating Qadri. Instead, the government gave in to many of their demands related to Pakistan’s controversial blasphemy laws. One of the demands which the government agreed to was the execution of Asia Bibi, whose case is pending in the courts in a blasphemy-related offense.

These revelations, regardless of their merit, will further limit the prime minister’s say in matters related to national security and foreign policy. For the remaining two years of his tenure, Nawaz Sharif is likely to serve as a ceremonial head of government, with actual power residing in the hands of the military and opposition parties.

http://thediplomat.com/2016/04/panama-papers-leave-pakistani-pm-nawaz-sharif-in-a-jam/?utm_content=buffere7d9b&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

Dr Shabir Choudhry files a writ in Islamabad High Court on ID Card Issue

Dr Shabir Choudhry files a writ in Islamabad High Court on ID Card Issue

Islamabad      08 April 2016

Dr Shabir Choudhry a Kashmiri political and human rights activist and author of many books was not provided with an Identity Card known as NICOP, due to his political work and writings which expose Pakistan’s Kashmir policy.

Dr Shabir Choudhry applied to renew his ID Card in June 2015 in Pakistani High Commission in London; and to date he has not officially heard from them. Normally the ID Card is issued within six weeks. His wife who applied at the same time was issued a card within six weeks.

Many phone calls, letters and even appeal from Asian Human Rights Commission fell on deaf ears; and officials of Islamic Republic of Pakistan chose to ignore all the pleas to punish Dr Choudhry for his political work.

Attorney for the claimant Nisar Ahmed Shah Advocate asserted that it was ‘basic Fundamental rights of the petitioner, which is being violated, abrogated by the Respondent No 1 and 2.’ He also said; ‘That the petitioner is entitled to be issued NICOP by the Respondent No. 1 & 2 in pursuance of above enumerate expired NICOP, instead Respondents No. 1 & 2 are delaying the matter without any lawful objection and refusing a legitimate right of the petitioner which is a clear violation of the settled principles of registration authority as well as the fundamental Rights of the petitioner granted by the constitution of Islamic Republic of Pakistan.’

In Pakistani Administered Kashmir and Pakistan NICOP or Identity Card is must, as that is required to buy or sell property, open bank accounts and many other things strictly depend on producing the ID Card.

Dr Shabir Choudhry said denial of ID Card means curbing my fundamental rights, which include a right to travel to my homeland, a right to sell my property, a right to inherit, a right to banking, a right to visit my relatives and right to visit a grave of my late father.

Dr Choudhry said not only I will fight to protect my fundamental rights but I will also continue to speak about rights of others who suffer at the hands of these officials.

END

drshabirchoudhry@gmail.com

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