Time for an honest debate

A trained negotiator could have ended the Islamabad stand-off - surely our police have none.

If this were not a most sensitive and critical subject, I would have gone down the ‘what is good for the goose should be good for the gander’ way, and asked if we had grades of geese and ganders: some very bad; some not THAT bad? But I want to start a debate about the death penalty and whether it should be applied only to SOME individuals and not others.

Mark at the outset please, that I am one of those who would not even countenance any sympathy for terrorists: the killers of our innocent men, women and children; our soldiers and policemen and levies and khassadars; for those who mount attacks on our military installations and destroy equipment worth hundreds of millions of dollars; those who lop off people’s heads; those who wage war on women. And those who blow up schools and shoot little girls in the head.

Indeed, those who have openly challenged the authority of the state and spat in the faces of its leaders; those who have given our country a worse name than it already has; those who kill innocents in the name of sectarianism; those who are xenophobic and close-minded; those who have even forgotten the age-old principle of virtually every society in the world: that you simply do not attack and kill your guests. Witness the Nanga Parbat attack on trekkers in which over 10 foreigners and their guide were killed.

But, if one is against the death penalty for it being an ‘unusual and final and degrading’ punishment for a person who has, say, killed his first wife and children so that he could transfer his property to the offspring of his second wife and her children, why should the same principle not be applied to someone accused of indulging in terrorist activities?

There is another argument against the death penalty in countries like Pakistan, where it took the capital’s police six hours to subdue a lone gunman who wasn’t really holding any hostages; who hadn’t barricaded himself but was, instead, strolling about on the main avenue in the Blue Area. And that is the ineptness of our police and the lack of any good investigative procedure except the littar — a 12-inch long and six-inch wide piece of leather attached to a wooden handle with which people are beaten on their bottom whilst lying on their stomachs! Ergo, it is not unusual for a poor person to be strung up rather than the actual perpetrator of the crime.

But let me introduce another aspect to this argument, which I shall keep short since I am going to quote from an excellent argument by my old friend, wise lawyer, and good man, Basharat Qadir. I feel that execution is too quick and might even give the convict martyr status. Lock up a murderer, terrorist even, for 300 years in an eight foot by 12 foot cell with a built-in toilet and no window, allowing him one hour of exercise, alone in a walled yard no more than 20 feet by 20 feet, watched over by two sub-machine gun-toting guards.

Wait till news filters out that this is going to be the fate of murderers and terrorists and see their blood run cold. I introduced this idea on Twitter three days ago and received good feedback: most of the respondents pointing out that our jails are ‘soft targets’, which are broken into every second month; jailors are corrupt, etcetera. Well then, let’s get our act together, get highly paid staff and build a high-tech, high-security prison or two on the lines of many in the world which are completely unapproachable, let alone easy to break into, for the most dangerous convicts. Why not one on ‘Kutta Island’ as someone suggested on Twitter the other day? It could also be mined both in the sea and on land!

A word about what I will call the ‘Islamabad Tamasha’ (IT). Let alone the ‘coverage’ by our TV channels of the actual action which was not only tasteless, it also put cameramen and reporters in the way of danger — I am deliberately avoiding the use of the term ‘In the Line of Fire’, that being the title of the Commando’s ‘book’ (stand up Humayun Gauhar!). An aside: anyone notice him quivering in his shoes at the hearing at which he was indicted for the much-lamented Benazir’s murder? I do wish his toadies would recall the elegance with which ‘bloody civilian’ elected PMs faced their trials and tribulations.

But back to the IT. If this is the level of efficiency of our capital’s police, then God help us. Let alone a whole squad, it doesn’t have even one sharp-shooter? Not even one sniper-rifle? This, by the way, is not the fault of this government or that: it is an endemic problem all across Pakistan where everyone concerned just passes the time, hoping that the good Lord will help whenever there is trouble.

The SOP all over the world in such matters is to end the stand-off in the shortest possible time. Get a trained negotiator — surely the police have none — and try and talk the gunman to surrender. If he does not see reason, a clean shot to the knee, and if that doesn’t work, to his damned head. End of story! No wonder the TTP is all over us.

This is part of what Basharat Qadir says: “I am really at a loss to understand how any punishment can avoid being irreversible. There is no doubt that once a death penalty is carried out, it cannot be reversed. But can life imprisonment be reversed AFTER it is carried out? Of course, it can be argued that life imprisonment can be commuted at any time before it is completed — but even if commuted, can any of the sentence served be restored to the convict? The time gone is GONE — be it as little as a single day. The law of bail tells us that a citizen cannot be WRONGLY deprived of liberty even for a single day! That ANY punishment is ‘reversible’ is a misconception. Thus, the error to be avoided is not ‘irreversible’ punishments, but wrong convictions.”

Let the debate begin …

Published in The Express Tribune, August 23^rd, 2013.

Like Opinion & Editorial on Facebook, follow @ETOpEd on Twitter to receive all updates on all our daily pieces.