Restricting free movement

While calls for reviewing policy on the ECL, or exit control list, were already there, the existence of a new covert list has generated a graver concern over the vague — in fact illegal — manner in which it is being used for restricting free movement of citizens out of the country. As this blacklist came up for debate at a meeting of the Senate’s Standing Committee on Law and Justice, it came to light that it carries the names of no fewer than 15,000 individuals. The directors general of the Federal Investigation Agency and the Immigration and Passport Department — the two departments that are responsible for putting the names on the blacklist — failed to satisfy the senators on any law allowing for or regulating the list.

The murky existence of the list can be gauged from the fact that even the Federal Minister for Human Rights, Dr Shireen Mazari, had no knowledge of the blacklist until a few months ago when two parliamentarian were disallowed from flying out of the country for being on the list. Dr Mazari, however, joined the opposition senators, including Raza Rabbani and Murtaza Javed Abbasi, in criticising the interior ministry for what they called the indiscriminate use of the blacklist. The federal minister categorically declared the list illegal and said there could be no room for any such list in a democratic era.

That no-fly lists, in whatever forms, have been used by the authorities as a tool to create problems for opponents is no secret. Even the misuse of ECL, a list backed up by the law, is a common knowledge. A review of the policy to regulate and standardise ECL is long overdue. Former interior minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali had tried to do the needful a few years ago, but to no avail. It’s time compact rules were formulated for placing any wrong-doers on the no-fly lists. After all, free movement is a matter of fundamental human rights.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 24^th, 2019.

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