Editorial

HRCP report

The HRCP report is necessary reading for those who are in denial about the state of the country today.

Editorial April 07, 2013

Critics of the HRCP allege that the organisation is relentlessly anti-military, with some even going so far as to call it unpatriotic.

In bold and stark numbers, the annual report of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) lays out just how low we have descended as a nation. There are a number of unenviable records we hold, from the number of journalists killed to having more deaths by breast cancer than any other country in the region. Yet, if there is one aspect of the report which stands out, it is the deplorable way that minorities have been treated in the country. As the HRCP reveals, in 2012 alone, 1,000 Hazara Shias were killed in Quetta which amounts to a substantial amount of their population. On top of that, 20 Ahmadis were killed in religious violence while six churches were burned down in Karachi. Add to this the militant war on women’s and girls’ education and you realise that Pakistan is a hospitable place only for very few people, who may at times also be killed inadvertently as they become caught up in bomb blasts or violence in general, or purposely, if targeted for personal enmity or political reasons amongst others.

Critics of the HRCP allege that the organisation is relentlessly anti-military, with some even going so far as to call it unpatriotic. This charge, as anyone who reads the report will find out, is hogwash, Yes, the HRCP catalogues what it sees as the many abuses carried out by the military but it is undeniably, an equal critic of serial human rights violators. In this report alone, it is critical of the Taliban for their unending war on the country, doesn’t spare the political parties for the violence in Karachi and is equally harsh on the US for its drone campaign in the tribal areas.

The HRCP report is necessary reading for those who are in denial about the state of the country today. In the endless debate over whether Pakistan is a failed state, there is one point that is never made. We may or may not be a failed state but this is a state that has failed its citizens. Were it not for organisations like the HRCP,
the suffering of our fellow countrymen may never have been heard.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 8^th, 2013.