The courts of invisibility

There was something of a glitch in passage of the legislation that gives a life of two years to the military courts

There was something of a glitch in the passage of the legislation that gives a life of two years to the military courts which had lapsed on January 7, 2017. The Senate on Wednesday had to defer the vote that would have ratified the bill because insufficient senators had shown up to make the house quorate. Perhaps they had better things to do. The vote on the Twenty-Eighth Amendment Bill 2017 will now take place on March 28.

There is no doubt that the bill will eventually be signed into law, though not without some dissenting voices. There was seemingly unanimous cross-party acceptance of the legislation until almost at the last minute when the PkMAP decided to oppose it and the JUI-F moved amendments to delete the terms ‘religion’ and ‘sect’ from the bill but these were rejected by the application of a voice vote; the parliamentary equivalent of being shouted down. Considering that the PkMAP is an ally of the government this is a surprising move; the subsequent abstention from the vote by the JUI-F somewhat less so. The action of neither party affected the outcome.

Pakistan has created an invisible and unaccountable system of ‘justice’ that is a travesty. The original reason for the creation of the military courts was to allow the government time and space to reform the justice system, a work long overdue. There was no effort to do this up until 7 January 2017 and we do not anticipate that there will be any before the end of the two years of military courts the nation now faces. The whole issue of reform in the justice system has effectively gone into the freezer and the government has abdicated its responsibilities in a manner that is going to have far-reaching consequences, none of them good.

The military courts are effectively a suspension of a fundamental of the law — the writ of Habeas Corpus. Also suspended are the rules of evidence and any form of transparency, the courts all being held in camera and their verdicts only announced once proceedings are concluded. Justice must be seen to be done to be credible. The creation of the courts of invisibility is a step backwards.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 23^rd, 2017.

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