Strong indictment
The 2011 Human Rights Watch report uses strong words to describe the situation Pakistan faces.
The report for 2011 by the New York-based human rights body, Human Rights Watch (HRW), uses strong words to describe the situation Pakistan faces. Indeed the manner in which reports fom both local and international human rights bodies grow more and more critical of the state of affairs in the country from one year to the next is something that should kindle far more thought about what is happening around us. Sadly, most such reports tend to go unheeded, making newspaper stories for a few days and then vanishing from view, the actual document perhaps lying on shelves in a few offices, or then accessed occasionally by researchers using the internet.
The latest report by HRW tells of a State in which a democratic government, under greater and greater pressure from the army, has failed to check extremism, abuses by the military itself or by other violent elements. It speaks of growing attacks by bombers, the wave of politically motivated killings that claimed some 800 lives in Karachi, the growing chaos in Balochistan and the clamp down on free speech marked by the death of 10 journalists, including Saleem Shahzad. The killing of ex-governor Salman Taseer further highlights this point. As we all know, all kinds of other horrors unfold in our midst.
They involve the killing or maiming of women, the persecution of minorities and the use of torture of all kinds in custody. What is most frightening is that things have worsened sharply when we compare the situation to that which existed three or four decades ago. This is reflected in the HRW report. What the detailed chapter on Pakistan does, however, is to also pin-point one of the key reasons for at least some of the major issues we face: chiefly the chains that bind the government, preventing it from acting freely, remaining tied up with a contest quest for survival and coping with issues that leave it even less able to manage the real affairs of the country. There seems to be before us no visible way to swiftly change things and move towards a better and brighter future.
Published in The Express Tribune, January 25th, 2012.
The latest report by HRW tells of a State in which a democratic government, under greater and greater pressure from the army, has failed to check extremism, abuses by the military itself or by other violent elements. It speaks of growing attacks by bombers, the wave of politically motivated killings that claimed some 800 lives in Karachi, the growing chaos in Balochistan and the clamp down on free speech marked by the death of 10 journalists, including Saleem Shahzad. The killing of ex-governor Salman Taseer further highlights this point. As we all know, all kinds of other horrors unfold in our midst.
They involve the killing or maiming of women, the persecution of minorities and the use of torture of all kinds in custody. What is most frightening is that things have worsened sharply when we compare the situation to that which existed three or four decades ago. This is reflected in the HRW report. What the detailed chapter on Pakistan does, however, is to also pin-point one of the key reasons for at least some of the major issues we face: chiefly the chains that bind the government, preventing it from acting freely, remaining tied up with a contest quest for survival and coping with issues that leave it even less able to manage the real affairs of the country. There seems to be before us no visible way to swiftly change things and move towards a better and brighter future.
Published in The Express Tribune, January 25th, 2012.