Human wrongs
We expect no early improvement
Pakistan is little more than a vast graveyard for human rights, and there are fresh burials regularly. The launch of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) report for 2016 was never going to be a roll-call of good news, but the report makes particularly depressing reading. It is a litany of infringements that touches every level of society, rich and poor, the weakest to some who at least in theory are powerful. There has been a rise in sexual harassment, ‘disappearances’ and crimes against the Ahmedi minority. Those who speak against some of the excesses of the state become targets themselves. The ‘bloggers’ of recent memory have either fled the country or live in fearful seclusion. So-called ‘liberals’ are a target everywhere, the minimum wage is widely flouted, women are poorly educated everywhere and many are denied the basic right of being able to vote. Allegations of ‘blasphemy’ are made with often deadly results. Military courts held in camera sentence people to death regularly on evidence that is never heard in public — and the death penalty anyway has never proved to be a deterrent to crime anywhere in the world.
Those who speak truth to power and Asma Jahangir, spokeswoman for the HRCP, is one of those, are themselves at risk and they will be well aware of that. The space in which moderates and free-thinkers are safe is reducing by the week. Some high-profile figures such as Sabeen Mahmud of T2F was murdered in Karachi. Perveen Rehman was a passionate advocate of the rights of the poorest of the poor. She was also murdered in Karachi — and there are others whose profile was lower but who were killed or ‘disappeared’. ‘Honour killings’ are on the rise as is rape, gang rape and abduction. And the attitude of the state to these manifest wrongs? A shrug of the metaphorical shoulder, some platitudinous political blathering about commitments to equality and an impenetrable silence when questioned about delivery rather than rhetoric. We expect no early improvement.
Published in The Express Tribune, May 12th, 2017.
Those who speak truth to power and Asma Jahangir, spokeswoman for the HRCP, is one of those, are themselves at risk and they will be well aware of that. The space in which moderates and free-thinkers are safe is reducing by the week. Some high-profile figures such as Sabeen Mahmud of T2F was murdered in Karachi. Perveen Rehman was a passionate advocate of the rights of the poorest of the poor. She was also murdered in Karachi — and there are others whose profile was lower but who were killed or ‘disappeared’. ‘Honour killings’ are on the rise as is rape, gang rape and abduction. And the attitude of the state to these manifest wrongs? A shrug of the metaphorical shoulder, some platitudinous political blathering about commitments to equality and an impenetrable silence when questioned about delivery rather than rhetoric. We expect no early improvement.
Published in The Express Tribune, May 12th, 2017.