Once again the federal government has dodged the bullet of reform — a bullet of its own making let us not forget — and kicked into the long grass changes that are vital if Pakistan is to have a criminal justice system that is equal to the task before it. Instead there is to be another period when an attenuated and secretive form of summary ‘justice’ is dispensed behind closed doors, unreported and invisible and with the power of life and death in its hands. Military courts anywhere in the world have been the roughest of ‘justice’ with the rules of evidence effectively suspended along with habeas corpus, a recourse to law whereby any person can report an unlawful detention or imprisonment before a court.
Military courts in Pakistan make a mockery of a badly broken justice system, and are the fall-back position of a government too weak to tackle the root-and-branch reforms that would make the nation a better place, more able to hold its head high among the international community as one where the rule of law is paramount. Sadly this is the default position when it comes to much of the nitty-gritty of NAP. The military as noted so often in these columns has done all asked of it — and now finds itself lumbered with the dispensation of ‘justice’ as well. The politicians should hang their collective heads — not that they ever will.
Published in The Express Tribune, March 1st, 2017.
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