Cruel deeds

Some means need to be found to end violence, make it possible for people to live lives not constantly marred by fear.

A new report by the London-based organisation Amnesty International has accused the Pakistan military of carrying out all kinds of misdeeds in the area lying along the Pak-Afghan border and also mentioned that a state of lawlessness prevented such abuses from being stopped. The report speaks of people going missing, dead bodies found on a regular basis, torture and arbitrary detentions by the military for prolonged periods, again in violation of the laws of the land.

It should be noted that similar abuses by the military have been highlighted before in previous reports by local human rights monitoring groups, who have spoken of illegal detentions and extrajudicial killings. Amnesty Internatioanl has also mentioned violations of human rights by Taliban militants, speaking of the misery this imposes on people caught between the two sides. In a statement, a spokesperson for the organisation has demanded that the “government must immediately reform the deeply flawed legal system in the tribal areas that perpetuates the cycle of violence.”



This, of course, has been a long-standing demand. The government at the centre has also promised reform. But this has yet to come. The result is that people continue to suffer and most agree that this is denying them of their fundamental rights. Some means need to be found to end this violence and make it possible for people to live lives which are not constantly marred by fear. For now, this fear persists across the tribal belt and also in other areas of the country.

Matters are made worse by the fact that those in authority are not ready to accept responsibility. Immediately after the damaging new report was made public, a spokesman for the Pakistan military stated it was nothing more than a “pack of lies”. We have heard very similar comments in the past, despite mounting evidence from Amnesty International of what it finds to be true. The problems that exist need be acknowledged if they are to be resolved. All institutions must work together to ensure this can happen and the military must refrain from carrying out measures which perpetuate the cycle of seemingly unending violence.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 15^th, 2012.