STATE TERRORISM OR RULE THROUGH TERROR [1988-1999]

Pakistan has a very poor human rights record since the rule of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto who established the Federal Security Force to eliminate his political opponents. Ironically, his implication in a political murder led to his execution. General Ziaul Haq's 11-year military rule witnessed lashing of anti-government elements in the name of Islam. However, the 11-year post-Zia psedo-democratic era experienced the worst kind of human rights violations.

CONFESSION BEFORE POLICE

The Benazir government made even General Zia, the military dictator, look like a liberal by its decision to consider deposition of an accused before the police as a valid evidence against him. The President promulgated an ordinance in April 1995 that permits confessions or statements against third persons obtained during police interrogations in parts of the country, declared to be terrorist affected areas, to be used in court. Human rights monitors view this ordinance as an endorse­ment of police torture to obtain evidence, while the gov­ernment argues that the law is currently not applied, because no part of the country has been declared a terrorist affected area.[1] The law authorizes the police and the civil armed forces (Rangers, Frontier Corps, Frontier Con­stabulary, or any other forces designated by the government) to use force against suspects. By allowing confessions to police as proven evidence the policemen are being given a legally protected excuse to liquidate their quarry in the so-called encounters.[2]

It is ironic indeed that the government of Pakistan -- that is (as our leaders keep reminding us ad nauseam) free and democratic -- has seen fit to do away with a protection against police brutality that in fact antedates even the British Raj. The origins of section 38 can be traced to 1817, i.e. the days of East India Company. More than a hundred years ago, in Queen-Empress vs Babu Lal (1884) 6 All 509, a Full Bench of the Allahabad High Court had  the occasion to examine sec­tion 25 of the Evidence Act. The observations of the learned judges as to the absolute need for protection provided by this section (or its pre­sent form, section 38) still ring true and can, unfortunately, be readily appreciated by modern day Pakistanis as representing the harsh reali­ties on the ground here today. One of the judges, Justice Mahmood (who, incidentally, was one of the first Muslims to be elevated to the High Court), observed:

"These legislative provisions leave no doubt in mind that the Legisla­ture had in view the mal-practices of police officers in extorting con­fessions from accused persons in order to gain credit by securing con­victions and that those malpractices went to the length of positive tor­ture The object of the rules was to put a stop to the extortion of con­fessions, by taking away from the police officers the advantage of proving such extorted confessions during the trial of accused per­sons." [3]

By Ordinance XXXIX of 1995, a new section 11A has been intro­duced in the Terrorist Affected Areas (Special Courts) Acts, 1992. The material portion of the new section is as follows: "Notwithstanding anything contained in Section 38 of the Qanun-e-Shahadat, 1984, the confession made by a person...before a police officer not below the rank of Deputy Superintendent of Police may be proved against him..." In other words, section 11A attempts, insofar as offenses tri­able under the Terrorist Affected Areas Act are concerned, to do away with the protection contained in section 38 of the Qanun-e-Shahadat. Section 38 provides with admirable brevity as follows: "No confession made to a police officer shall be proved against any person accused of an offence."

Commenting on this retrogressive piece of legislation, the daily Dawn_ said: Do we need to be reminded how our police work and what sophisticated methods they use to carry out their investigations? In the armory of our police force no tool of investigation is more fre­quently used than what in the local lingo is called the chittar, a vicious piece of leather with a handle which no police station through the land is without and which is used indiscriminately not only on offenders but on anyone else foolish enough to provoke the police's anger. Indeed, even a more reprehensible feature of the ordinance than the threat to innocent detainees is the danger that it will further undermine public faith in the system of justice.

POLITICAL VICTIMIZATION

Ghulam Hussein Unnar's case symbolizes the height of "state terror­ism."[4] The hereditary chieftain of the Unnar tribe contested the 1985 partyless elections from Larkana and was elected.  In 1988, elections he stood on a PPP ticket and was again elected to the provincial as­sembly.  During Benazir's second stint he emerged as a popular politi­cian on the wrong side of the fence. He contested the 1993 elections on a Pakistan Muslim League [Functional] ticket and lost by only 2,000 votes. Unnar claimed it was due to rigging. Between November 1993 and February 1994, 17 anti-corruption cases were brought against him, for 14 of which he managed to get bail before arrest from the Sindh High Court, and for the remaining three bail from the special anti-corruption court in Larkana. Between February and June 1994 he was detained four times under the Maintenance of Public Order Ordi­nance. The blind FIR cycle of arrests was brought into play against him in July 1994, and it kept him continuously in custody until De­cember 5, 1995. He was too sick to be flown abroad and was admitted to the Agha Khan hospital where he expired on January 25, 1996. Chief Justice of Sindh High Court, Nasir Aslam Zahid, on April 3, 1994, or­dered that Unnar be examined by a medical board, which was done on April 4. The board recommended that he be hospitalized forthwith and the CJ ordered so on April 8. His orders were disregarded, and a con­tempt application had to be filed on April 12. CJ Zahid reprimanded the authorities and very ill Unnar was taken to the Larkana hospital on April 15. On April 16, 1994, Justice Zahid was removed from his post as Chief Justice of the SHC and he took his oath as a member of the Shariat Court. It is clear that Unnar was made to pay for his collabora­tion with Jam Sadiq Ali's government, which persecuted several senior members of the PPP in Larkana, Benazir's home district.

Ironically, it was Jam Sadiq's government which demonstrated that "blind FIRs" as the former Sindh Chief Justice Nasir Aslam Zahid termed them, are a convenient tool to harass political opponents and settle old score. The MQM has also alleged that its senior members and activists have been falsely implicated in several such FIRs, and that no elected member of his party has less than 50 cases to their name.

A blind First Information Report (FIR) is an FIR for which no case can possibly be made. It can be used in the so-called 'blind' system to hold in remand those whom the 'authorities' wish to harass for political or vengeful or other reasons. A cop whips out a dormant case file, asks his obliging magistrate to remand the victim in his custody for 14 days (maximum permissible) for 'interrogation,' at the end of which he pro­nounces his suspect to be innocent and releases him. But before the victim is freed, another cop takes over and the cycle continues till the 'high-ups' feel that the victim has had enough. The blind FIR system is operated by Station House Offices who have bought their police sta­tions - the purchasing having been acknowledged by none less than the President of the Republic.[5] 

RANGERS OPERATION IN KARACHI

On November 30, 1994, the Benazir government withdrew army from Karachi and other towns of Sindh as it failed to restore lasting peace in its 29-month operation. The army was replaced by the Rangers force which launched ruthless operations of mass arrests, siege of Mohajir localities, and at random killings of alleged terrorists in order  to root out what the government called "the MQM terrorists." According to the Pakistan Human Rights Commission report, 353 people were killed and 649 were injured between October 1993 and November 1994 while the army was operating in Sindh.[6]  But more than 850 people had been killed within seven months of the operation by June 1995, including 280 in June alone.  By the year end, 1800 people had been killed by the official count.

Benazir enraged the Mohajirs when  she called them as 'buzdil chu­has." While  addressing a rally in Kasur on May 25, 1995, she said "cowardly mice had come out to spread terror."[7] Sindh remained disturbed with crime, terrorism, ethnic prejudices and gang warfare between MQM factions. The top PPP leadership recognized only three aspects of trouble in Karachi and rest of Sindh: politically a suspect MQM with which it is necessary to keep talking; terrorism that still stalks needs to be fought tooth and nail; and there is subversion and sabotage by India. It does not suspect that there can be a political di­mension to terrorism or that negotiations with an opposition party, un­less they are seriously intended and are purposeful, can do more harm than good. [8]

On the situation in Karachi, the US Human Rights Report for 1995 pointed out: "The number of extra-judicial killings, often in the form of deaths in police custody or staged encounters in which the police or paramilitary forces shoot and kill the suspects, increased in 1995. Most of such killings occurred in Sindh province in clashes between the gov­ernment and factions of the MQM. In trying to restore order in Kara­chi, the government regularly used excessive force, including tor­ture and alleged encounter killings, against MQM activists. The rate of po­litically motivated murders in Karachi reached an average of 10 per day in July; by year's end, over 1,800 people had been killed. Accord­ing to the Karachi police, 500 police officers had been sus­pended for misbehavior as of September. None was known to have been prose­cuted for abuses.

"Many observers believe the government to have been responsible for the murders of Altaf Hussain's brother and nephew in retaliation for the murder of the brother of the Sindh Chief Minister.

"Both main MQM factions, the MQM/A and the Haqiqi faction, re­sorted to extra-judicial killings and torture of their opponents and tar­geted police and security officials. Although the MQM/A consistently claims that its activists are innocent, unarmed victims of ethnic vio­lence, disinterested observers believe that cells of armed MQM/A ac­tivists are responsible for a considerable amount of Karachi's violence and crime. This includes extortion of large sums of money from Mo­hajir businessmen as well asothers.

"The government uses mass arrests to quell civil unrest. During at­tempts to reduce crime and violence in Karachi, the MQM/A claimed that police and Rangers arrested 7,000 Mohajirs in numerous police sweeps. Many of those arrested were not suspected of committing a specific crime, and were allegedly held until family members paid po­lice officers a ransom for their release."

The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan in its report on the state of human rights in 1995 noted that several hundred persons in Karachi and around 180 in Punjab were killed in the so-called police encoun­ters or police custody.[9]

The Amnesty International, in its 1995 report on "Human Rights Crisis in Karachi,"[10] apportioned blame for continued violence in Karachi to both the law enforcement agencies and the armed opposition groups. It documented cases of arbitrary arrests, torture, deaths in custody, ex­tra-judicial executions, "disappearances" allegedly committed by law enforcement personnel and the human rights abuses allegedly perpe­trated by armed opposition groups.

However, the AI emphasized that human rights abuses perpetrated by armed opposition groups may never be used by law enforcement per­sonnel as an excuse to ignore national and international human rights safeguards and to commit human rights violations themselves; to tor­ture, kill or "disappear" people described by the government as "terrorists." The report criticized the government for failing to protect political activists, journalists and ordinary residents of Karachi from human rights abuses. It found that in some cases, those in authority appear to have condoned abuses by some armed opposition groups.

"Killings have been taking place due to an ongoing struggle between the two factions of the MQM and a government campaign to restore law and order implemented by the police and paramilitary Rangers. The government holds the MQM responsible for most of the human rights abuses, while the MQM has declared that the government is at­tempting to crush them as an organized political force by unlawfully detaining its workers, torturing and extra-judicially killing them, forcing them to change their political allegiance and perpetrating crimes for which the MQM is held responsible.

"The government in its determination to restore law and order has called upon the police to use "ruthlessness," and they have been tempted to use harsher, and sometimes unlawful methods in dealing with armed opposition groups who have targeted law enforcement per­sonnel. The slowness of judicial process has also led police officers to take law in their own hands. The government's heavy-handed searches, the harassment to which Mohajirs and MQM members are subjected, and other human rights violations, it is feared, may drive young Mohajirs to extremism. Some observers told the Amnesty Inter­national that the MQM leadership may already have lost control over some of its militant youth groups.

The report also looked at complaints of torture, ill-treatment and in­timidation of prisoners, and detainees in the police custody. The blind-folding of people during cordon-and-search was also reported. The detained persons are known to have included boys as young as 12  and old men. There have also been reports that torture of prisoners was carried out with intent to extract money from concerned family mem­bers. "The frequency with which people believed to be MQM mem­bers, or to be closely associated with MQM members are subjected to torture and extortion, suggests that the police assume that they can do so with impunity," the report concluded.

When it suited successive governments in Islamabad, the MQM was accommodated, but when Altaf Hussain was no longer required, he was unceremoniously dumped. However, all along, the MQM re­mained an armed and very dangerous group: for this government to pretend that it has just discovered the true nature of this ethnic party is a bit disingenuous.[11]

During Benazir's first stint in office, on 27 May 1990, the Sindh government  launched a crackdown in Hyderabad, the bastion of the MQM power. Shoot-on-sight curfew was imposed, and a police house-to-house search be­gan. There were conflicting reports over what happened next but, in what became known as the Pucca Qila massacre, crowds of Mohajirs emerged from Hyerdabad fort, fronted by women and children holding the Holy Quran over their heads. The PPP claimed that behind them were snip­ers who began shooting at the police, while the MQM claimed that the police, unprovoked, brutally began firing at the women. Thirty-one women and children were killed, sparking off as usual a chain reaction in Karachi. According to some reports, the final death toll was 70 in Hyderabad and more than 250 elsewhere.

Finally the army intervened, quickly restoring peace and wel­comed by banners calling for martial law. Iqbal Haider, an ad­viser to the Sindh Chief Minister, said that the army's interven­tion caused con­fusion be­cause neither the federal nor the pro­vincial government had called on their support. President Ghulam Ishaq Khan denounced the Pucca Qila operation and pointed out that the terrorists were present in all the parties, and should be eliminated without discrimination.

HUMAN RIGHTS SITUATION DIFFICULT

The US report described the overall human rights situation in Pakistan as "difficult" and mainly blamed the government for the failure.  Mem­bers of security forces committed numerous abuses in 1995. Although the government has publicly pledged to address human rights concerns, particularly those involving women, child labor, and minor­ity relig­ions, the overall human rights situation remains difficult.

"Police and prison officials routinely use force to elicit confessions and compel detainees to incriminate others; the practice has become a stan­dard procedure. Common torture methods included: beating, burning with cigarettes, whipping the soles of the feet, sexual assault, prolonged isolation, electric shock, denial of food or sleep, handing upside down, forced spreading of the legs and public humiliation. Some magistrates and doctors helped cover up the abuse by issuing investigation and medical reports that the victims died of natural causes.

"The overall failure of successive governments to prosecute and punish the abusers, however, was the single largest obstacle to ending or even reducing the incidence of abuse. The authorities sometimes trans­ferred, arrested, or suspended officers, but seldom prosecuted or pun­ished them. Investigating officers generally shielded their colleagues. Persons attempting to bring charges against police officers were often threatened by other officers and dropped the charges."

In March 1995, a contingent of Rangers surrounded the City Courts in Karachi and searched the court rooms. Sixty persons were taken into custody.[12]