Bhensa has been controlled.

[Skywalker]

What is quite baffling to watch is the effort being spent to demonize the bloggers, as if that would justify their abduction by the criminal party, whoever that might be. What the focus should be on is to identify the culprits so that it can be ascertained as to who those criminals are, to get them the punishment that they deserve by fair and due legal process.

Stop worrying about Pakistan, you should be more worried about your new beloved president Donald trump who will show your level, a third grade citizen living in states trying to be more loyal than the king himself.
You and your kinds are nothing but a joke and for them everrthing is a conspiracy in Pakistan. Keep barking.

 

[VCheng]

What is happening in USA is the topic of that other thread two subfora down the hall to your right.

Let's stay on topic here. Besides, even that saga shows the importance of due process. What is legal or not will be determined by all parties concerned, according to the Constitution of the Land. Imagine that!

 

[VCheng]

http://www.dawn.com/news/1311707/crisis-of-impunity

Crisis of impunity
REEMA OMER


“THERE is a climate of impunity in Pakistan with regard to enforced disappearances, and the authorities are not sufficiently dedicated to investigate cases of enforced disappearance and hold the perpetrators accountable.” The UN Working Group on Enforced and Involuntary Disappearances (WGEID) in September last year made this scathing assessment of Pakistan’s performance in addressing the practice of enforced disappearances in the country.

It has become a cliché to speak of a ‘climate of impunity’, but the phrase is entirely apt in describing the situation in Pakistan, where impunity for human rights violations has become institutionalised and systemised. It is also essential in understanding why the practice of enforced disappearances has persisted and is spreading — both in terms of geographical reach and also the categories of people being targeted.

‘Impunity’ means the impossibility of bringing violators of serious crimes and gross human rights violations to account, typically because there is an absence of a proper investigation that would lead to the arrest, prosecution and sentencing of those responsible. It results in concealing the truth; denying victims the right to effective remedy and reparation; and emboldening perpetrators of human rights violations.

People continue to go missing.

While there are reports that the practice of forcibly disappearing people has existed in Pakistan since at least the 1970s, such cases have been recorded in significant numbers after Pakistan became a key ally in the US-led ‘war on terror’. Since then, hundreds, many of them suspected to be associated with terrorism-related offences, have reportedly been ‘disappeared’ and detained in secret facilities. Cases of ‘disappearances’ are also reported in large numbers in Balochistan against political activists, students and journalists, particularly those perceived as sympathetic to separatist movements in the province. In recent years, there has been a rise in cases of enforced disappearances in Sindh, where largely political activists have been targeted.

Enforced disappearances have now become a national phenomenon: in August 2015, Zeenat Shahzadi became one of the first women victims, and recently a number of bloggers and activists were ‘disappeared’. Efforts to bring perpetrators of enforced disappearances to justice, however, have failed at all levels.

The National Commission of Human Rights does not have jurisdiction over the intelligence apparatus and can only make recommendations where members of the security forces have allegedly violated rights. The Commission of Inquiry on Enforced Disappearances keeps a record of reported enforced disappearances and ‘traces’ the whereabouts of ‘missing’ people, but has failed to take any action where such individuals are found in the custody of security agencies. Courts have played an important role in highlighting and condemning enforced disappearances, but have largely confined their role to recovering ‘disappeared’ people, not bringing perpetrators to account.

Even where courts have actively pursued such cases, loopholes in the legal system have allowed culprits to evade responsibility. Muhabbat Shah, a case involving the enforced disappearance of 28 people from a Malakand internment centre, is a telling illustration. In December 2013, the Supreme Court ruled that “no law enforcing agency can forcibly detain a person without showing his whereabouts to his relatives for a long period” and that those responsible for the enforced disappearances should be dealt with “strictly in accordance with law”. The government responded by filing a review of the judgement, asking the court to delete remarks implicating the agencies as such findings could “demoralise the troops”.

In March 2014, after repeated court orders, the defence minister lodged FIRs for wrongful confinement against some military officers allegedly responsible for the ‘disappearances’. However, KP reportedly referred the matter to the military for further investigation and possible trial under the Army Act, 1952. Since military trials are secret and not open to the public, what became of the case is not known.

If Pakistan is to stop the practice of enforced disappearances, it must start bringing those responsible for this practice to justice. At the minimum, this would require recognising enforced disappearance as an autonomous offence (and until such time, prosecuting such acts under existing laws); empowering independent institutions like the NCHR to investigate cases of alleged disappearances, notwithstanding the identity of the perpetrators; ensuring cases of serious human rights violations are only tried by civilian courts, including where members of the security apparatus are allegedly responsible; and as recommended by the WGEID, enacting “clear rules and dedicated institutions … to ensure the oversight and accountability of law enforcement and intelligence agencies”.

This crisis of impunity must end, not only to bring justice to victims and their families, but also to avoid irreparable damage to the rule of law in the country.

The writer is a legal adviser for the International Commission of Jurists.

Published in Dawn January 31st, 2017

 

[punit]

http://www.dawn.com/news/1311707/crisis-of-impunity

Crisis of impunity
REEMA OMER


“THERE is a climate of impunity in Pakistan with regard to enforced disappearances, and the authorities are not sufficiently dedicated to investigate cases of enforced disappearance and hold the perpetrators accountable.” The UN Working Group on Enforced and Involuntary Disappearances (WGEID) in September last year made this scathing assessment of Pakistan’s performance in addressing the practice of enforced disappearances in the country.

It has become a cliché to speak of a ‘climate of impunity’, but the phrase is entirely apt in describing the situation in Pakistan, where impunity for human rights violations has become institutionalised and systemised. It is also essential in understanding why the practice of enforced disappearances has persisted and is spreading — both in terms of geographical reach and also the categories of people being targeted.

‘Impunity’ means the impossibility of bringing violators of serious crimes and gross human rights violations to account, typically because there is an absence of a proper investigation that would lead to the arrest, prosecution and sentencing of those responsible. It results in concealing the truth; denying victims the right to effective remedy and reparation; and emboldening perpetrators of human rights violations.

People continue to go missing.

While there are reports that the practice of forcibly disappearing people has existed in Pakistan since at least the 1970s, such cases have been recorded in significant numbers after Pakistan became a key ally in the US-led ‘war on terror’. Since then, hundreds, many of them suspected to be associated with terrorism-related offences, have reportedly been ‘disappeared’ and detained in secret facilities. Cases of ‘disappearances’ are also reported in large numbers in Balochistan against political activists, students and journalists, particularly those perceived as sympathetic to separatist movements in the province. In recent years, there has been a rise in cases of enforced disappearances in Sindh, where largely political activists have been targeted.

Enforced disappearances have now become a national phenomenon: in August 2015, Zeenat Shahzadi became one of the first women victims, and recently a number of bloggers and activists were ‘disappeared’. Efforts to bring perpetrators of enforced disappearances to justice, however, have failed at all levels.

The National Commission of Human Rights does not have jurisdiction over the intelligence apparatus and can only make recommendations where members of the security forces have allegedly violated rights. The Commission of Inquiry on Enforced Disappearances keeps a record of reported enforced disappearances and ‘traces’ the whereabouts of ‘missing’ people, but has failed to take any action where such individuals are found in the custody of security agencies. Courts have played an important role in highlighting and condemning enforced disappearances, but have largely confined their role to recovering ‘disappeared’ people, not bringing perpetrators to account.

Even where courts have actively pursued such cases, loopholes in the legal system have allowed culprits to evade responsibility. Muhabbat Shah, a case involving the enforced disappearance of 28 people from a Malakand internment centre, is a telling illustration. In December 2013, the Supreme Court ruled that “no law enforcing agency can forcibly detain a person without showing his whereabouts to his relatives for a long period” and that those responsible for the enforced disappearances should be dealt with “strictly in accordance with law”. The government responded by filing a review of the judgement, asking the court to delete remarks implicating the agencies as such findings could “demoralise the troops”.

In March 2014, after repeated court orders, the defence minister lodged FIRs for wrongful confinement against some military officers allegedly responsible for the ‘disappearances’. However, KP reportedly referred the matter to the military for further investigation and possible trial under the Army Act, 1952. Since military trials are secret and not open to the public, what became of the case is not known.

If Pakistan is to stop the practice of enforced disappearances, it must start bringing those responsible for this practice to justice. At the minimum, this would require recognising enforced disappearance as an autonomous offence (and until such time, prosecuting such acts under existing laws); empowering independent institutions like the NCHR to investigate cases of alleged disappearances, notwithstanding the identity of the perpetrators; ensuring cases of serious human rights violations are only tried by civilian courts, including where members of the security apparatus are allegedly responsible; and as recommended by the WGEID, enacting “clear rules and dedicated institutions … to ensure the oversight and accountability of law enforcement and intelligence agencies”.

This crisis of impunity must end, not only to bring justice to victims and their families, but also to avoid irreparable damage to the rule of law in the country.

The writer is a legal adviser for the International Commission of Jurists.

Published in Dawn January 31st, 2017

After effects ARE SPILLING IN THE FORUM!

 

[VCheng]

After effects ARE SPILLING IN THE FORUM!

PDF cannot be but a microcosm of Pakistan itself, including on the topic of this thread.

 

[punit]

PDF cannot be but a microcosm of Pakistan itself, including on the topic of this thread.

but now a days new joiners are openly abusing Ahamadi Muslims and threatening to kill the so called supporters of blasphemy. In one thread some chaps are openly praising killer of late Mr Taseer.

 

[VCheng]

but now a days new joiners are openly abusing Ahamadi Muslims and threatening to kill the so called supporters of blasphemy. In one thread some chaps are openly praising killer of late Mr Taseer.

As I said, PDF is a microcosm of the real Pakistan, the good, the bad, and the ugly, all of it.

 

[Respect4Respect01]

What is quite baffling to watch is the effort being spent to demonize the bloggers, as if that would justify their abduction by the criminal party, whoever that might be. What the focus should be on is to identify the culprits so that it can be ascertained as to who those criminals are, to get them the punishment that they deserve by fair and due legal process.

enough with your double standards already, the biggest issue here is why those people created those pages, and why are they still not arrested and why the corrupt government did not register cases against them.

 

[haviZsultan]

but now a days new joiners are openly abusing Ahamadi Muslims and threatening to kill the so called supporters of blasphemy. In one thread some chaps are openly praising killer of late Mr Taseer.

We will deal with our problems. India too has problems like this with a terrorist PM and beef ban. We are distant cousins, India and us and many of us unfortunately have the same conservative mindset. Its unfortunate that people decipher and judge Islam so narrow mindedly but as I said we aren't the only people with this problem.

 

[VCheng]

As part of due process, cases have indeed been registered:

https://defence.pk/threads/fia-books-salman-haider-others-in-blasphemy-case.475546/

Let the process continue as specified by law.

 

[VCheng]

Another thought-provoking article on the issue of manipulated vigilantism and tolerating dissent:

http://www.dawn.com/news/1312203/the-vigilante-menace

The vigilante menace
I.A. REHMAN

THE call by the office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to seriously tackle the new wave of xenophobia, racism and intolerance, witnessed recently in Europe and the US, has a special relevance to Pakistan as the threat to this country from the vigilante brigade is assuming new dimensions.

Vigilante action was relatively unknown in Pakistan until Gen Ziaul Haq decided to empower state functionaries to force Muslim citizens to perform their religious rituals. The scheme died with him. The effort by the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal to revive it in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa through a hisba law was scotched by the judiciary. However, the ultra-conservative extremists discovered the possibilities of vigilante action while promoting the enforcement of Gen Zia’s additions to the Penal Code list of offences relating to religion.

They began by reporting to the police what they claimed to be offences under Sections 295 to 298 of the PPC. Since those charged under these sections faced greater hazards than the accused booked under any other law (until anti-terrorism laws became the most dreaded measures), these provisions began to be invoked for settling personal scores or to deprive one’s rivals of their property or business advantage.

Thus, vigilante action took two forms. One, complaints were filed with the police for action under the provisions mentioned above, all of which were quite wrongly given the label of the blasphemy law. Secondly, courts began to be gheraoed by highly charged crowds when such cases were heard. While most of these cases in the beginning were against non-Muslim citizens, the logic of the discriminatory laws and the possibilities of their abuse resulted in the targeting of Muslims too, from social scientist Akhtar Hamid Khan to political leaders including Benazir Bhutto. Now these laws are also used as weapons in intra-Muslim sectarian conflicts. Today, more Muslims, including prayer leaders, are facing blasphemy charges than non-Muslims.

Many people suspect that the zealots are commanded by someone in authority.


Until recently, the vigilante groups had concentrated on persecuting the members of the Ahmadi community and the Hazaras of Quetta. Professional Ahmadi-baiters soon entered the field. At one time, a majority of complaints against Ahmadis in Sindh were filed by a single preacher in a town near Hyderabad. The offences varied from writing ‘Bismillah’ in a private letter to preaching the Ahmadi faith. These complaints ended when the complainant was promoted and posted in a bigger city.

In Punjab too, several professionals won distinction for targeting Ahmadis who were merely delivering their monthly paper, duly registered, to subscribers, or who had made the mistake of buying a goat in the days preceding Eidul Azha. The latter were accused of planning to offer a sacrifice on Eid. In one case, the police not only hauled up an Ahmadi for slaughtering a lamb, but also used the mutton recovered from his house as case property. One of the biggest feats of the anti-Ahmadi vigilante group was frightening the chief election commissioner in 2002 into registering the Ahmadis on a separate list while other voters were being put on a single electoral roll regardless of their belief.

These were relatively underdeveloped vigilantes as compared to their more recent incarnations, some of whom have taken to liquidating their victims themselves while some others hold rallies against anyone expressing views the establishment does not like.

One such group surfaced after five bloggers disappeared involuntarily and the police received a complaint of blasphemy allegedly committed by them. Rallies were held by mobs in Lahore and several other places, calling for the deaths of the ‘missing persons’. The manoeuvre was apparently too crude to be swallowed by the interior minister, who dismissed all speculation as premature.

Nobody stopped these vigilante groups. Instead, the police blocked roads to ensure the traffic did not disturb them. This perhaps emboldened the vigilante brigade to target two journalists who are also prominent TV figures. One of them is accused of crossing the red line drawn by the doyens of religiosity, and the other for daring to ask some questions about the establishment’s privileges. Rallies have been held by young men, who look like students, to demand putting the two journalists on the rack.

Many people suspect that these zealots are commanded by someone in authority. This impression receives support from the fact that these agitators have never taken up a public grievance — from unannounced stoppage of electricity or gas supplies, to the rape of five-year-old girls, to the sale of substandard stents — and they viciously attack citizens who are guilty only of expressing dissent, which is their constitutional right. One hopes this impression about any official patronage of vigilantism is wrong and will be dispelled by appropriate government action to neutralise it.

But mischief has already been done. Through issuing threats on phone or instigation of violence against their targets, the vigilante groups are creating a climate of all-pervasive fear. The people will be under pressure not only to give up their right to freedom of expression but also to stop thinking or reflecting on their condition. There will be no discourse worth the name, and society will be reduced to a horde of morons.

The government has traditionally hesitated from proceeding against vigilante groups because they use a religious cover. There is nothing religious about their objectives or their conduct. The whole thing is political. One proof of this is their aversion to any scholarly debate on their heresy and forcing of ulema who disagree with them into exile or retirement at home. What the government must realise is that the visible targets of vigilante action are pawns in a game in which the real target is the state and the system that it swears by. While the vigilante brigade is a threat to individual victims, it is a menace to the state. The harm it could do is incalculable.

Published in Dawn February 2nd, 2017

 

[VCheng]

A possible solution?

http://www.dawn.com/news/1312952/ending-enforced-disappearances

Ending enforced disappearances
FAISAL SIDDIQI —

ON the issue of enforced disappearances or missing persons, a kind of media civil war is going on, with the human rights lobby and liberals pitted against the military elite and its intelligence agencies. The human rights lobby and liberals accuse the intelligence agencies of engaging in the immoral, illegal and unconstitutional practice of enforced disappearances with ill intention and impunity. For their part, the military elite and its intelligence agencies accuse the human rights lobby and liberals of, at best, not understanding the necessity of this practice to safeguard national security and, at worst, of acting on a foreign agenda. The two groups question each other’s intentions and neither is willing to accept that both may actually be right in part.

What if the military and intelligence elites are right that detention without trial for a reasonably longer time period is essential in the fight against militancy and foreign espionage and that such detention is not possible within the current legal framework? And, what if the disclosure of the truth by the intelligence agencies about missing persons is not possible without legal and constitutional immunity? On the other hand, what if the human rights lobby is also right that enforced disappearances is a destructive practice, not only for a modern constitutional state but also for the national and international reputation and morale of the military elite and intelligence agencies?

Can these opposite positions be reconciled?

Hypocrisy vs denial: With the exception of the principled position taken against all enforced disappearances by the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, there is a general hypocrisy pervading liberal sections of Pakistani society on this issue. How many liberals have condemned or protested or written about the enforced disappearances of Islamic militants and their sympathisers by the same intelligence agencies? Are they willing to recognise that the overall majority of the disappeared are Islamist militants and their sympathisers and not Baloch activists or liberal bloggers?

What if the military and intelligence agencies are right about detention without trial?


How many liberals are willing to accept that the allegations of Baloch activists that there are 12,000 to 14,000 Baloch missing persons is political propaganda because according to the Commission of Inquiry on Enforced Disappearances (as on December 2015) a total of 3,012 cases were filed, out of which 1,449 have been traced, and even out of 1,390 pending cases, only 125 relate to Balochistan? Even if these figures about Balochistan are underestimated, there is no data showing that the number of Baloch enforced disappearances is more than a couple of hundred. Such hypocrisy is an obstacle to recognising that actually there is societal consensus, among liberals and Islamists, to end all enforced disappearances.

As for the intelligence agencies, can they deny that they have engaged in enforced disappearances in view of the following facts? Firstly, two official Commissions of Inquiry on Enforced Disappearances, in which both the ISI and MI participated, recognised enforced disappearances. Secondly, the report of a Federal Task Force on Missing Persons, of which both agencies were a part, also recognised enforced disappearances. Thirdly, the Supreme Court judgements in the ‘Muhabat Shah’ case and ‘Law and Order Case on Balochistan’ recognised enforced disappearances. Fourthly, an official ISI statement, attached as Appendix I to the book The ISI of Pakistan by Hein G. Kiessling, recognises the practice of enforced disappearances and details efforts made to solve it. Therefore, denial of enforced disappearances by the security apparatus in 2017 is like living in an alternative Trumpian world of invented but fictional ‘facts’.

Ambiguity leads to impunity: Whether it is the operations in the tribal areas or in Karachi or elsewhere, is it not an open secret that one of the key anti-militant strategies adopted by the intelligence agencies is enforced disappearances? There is universal praise by the liberals for Operation Zarb-i-Azb even though it is well documented that this ‘war on terror’ has also involved large-scale unjustified arrests, torture, enforced disappearances and extra-judicial killings. It is this ambiguity of response in not condemning the enforced disappearances of Islamic militants or lukewarm condemnations of the enforced disappearances of MQM militants that both confuses, and provides justification, leading to the rigid approach of the intelligences agencies to continue these practices with impunity.

Towards a compromise: Does our political elite or the parliamentarians know that there are consensus recommendations (ie consented to by both the civilian and military establishment) of the Federal Task Force on Missing Persons gathering dust in the interior ministry? And that there is a draft law on enforced disappearances lying with Nacta based on these consensus recommendations?

The solutions proposed are controversial but realistic. Firstly, we need to rethink the current detention framework under Article 10 of the Constitution; we need more flexible detention laws allowing long-term detention of suspects without trial. Yes, this is not ideal but this will radically diminish illegal detentions/enforced disappearances, torture and at times, extrajudicial killings as a consequence of such enforced disappearances. Without such flexible detention laws, intelligence agencies will not end enforced disappearances.

Secondly, once flexible detentions laws are in force, criminal prosecutions should immediately follow any future cases of enforced disappearances.

Thirdly, there should be legal immunity for intelligence agency officials and other state officials for making full disclosures about missing persons, especially people missing for many years. Moreover, compensation should be paid to the victims of enforced disappearances.

Fourthly, an independent tribunal is needed for deciding enforced disappearances cases with powers to take action against any state official engaged in the practice and with power to award compensation to the victims.

The issue of enforced disappearances is a difficult moral and political one, and we should have the courage to recognise that there are no choices between good and bad solutions in such difficult issues. Rather, the choices are between bad and worse solutions. Therefore, we must make these tough choices.

The writer is a lawyer.

Published in Dawn February 6th, 2017

 

[VCheng]

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/06/opinion/the-disappeared-pakistan.html

The Disappeared, Pakistan



Mohammed Hanif FEB. 6, 2017


KARACHI, Pakistan — Every few weeks I get a phone call or text message informing me that yet another journalist, political activist or someone hyperactive on social media has gone missing. From past experience I know that they have most likely been picked up by one of the secret agencies. I also know that when they return they’ll be changed people.

When they disappear, they are opinionated and noisy; they believe their 800-word op-ed or their Facebook post or the poem that went viral will change the world. When they return, they have become the sort of people who will say, it was nice knowing you, why don’t you shut up and go away?

It’s as if they weren’t abducted by the state and kept in a dungeon or a safe house, probably interrogated, in some cases tortured, and always threatened. It’s like they went to some rehab program from which they have come back fully reformed and compliant.

In the past year, hundreds of political activists in Karachi have been picked up, and some renounced their loyalties upon their return. They leave the country if they can; otherwise, they try to become unquestioning citizens. Maybe they are right. What good has ever come of talking about state abduction and torture and solitary confinement?

A number of character flaws can make you a missing person. Maybe you have not cursed India enough for its atrocities in Kashmir. Maybe you belong to a religious militant group. Maybe you are too fond of questioning the army’s role in the country’s affairs. Maybe you criticize the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, a grand network of roads and bridges that is supposed to transform our fortunes. Or maybe you just protest too much about other missing persons.

Five social-media activists disappeared recently. They were little known outside their own social-media bubbles. They were gone for almost three weeks, and during their absence, a slew of tweets and pro-army Facebook pages claimed that some of them had been posting material that insulted our religion.

Blasphemy is a killer charge. Any word or action that is seen to cause offense to any religious group — in fact, anything construed as insulting a religious figure — can make you an open target for religious zealots. Calling someone a blasphemer is a blood sport.

Pakistan’s interior minister went on record to discourage such accusations against the five missing activists. But these charges have built-in momentum. Once accused of blasphemy you can’t really ward that off: How do you defend yourself against a charge that can’t be repeated in public? What exactly is it that you didn’t do?

Imagine getting released after a few weeks in a dungeon and re-entering the world only to see people on national television demanding your head and religious parties on street corners waiting to lynch you. First, you were disappeared by the state; then when you are released, you feel forced to disappear from public life.

It’s not just that the state is stifling dissent; it’s also making everyone wonder: Have I crossed the line? Where was that line? How come that other person crossed every line of decency and still has a TV show?

And it’s not only the state and its intelligence agencies waging war on common sense; the media and other civil institutions are as well.

Aamir Liaquat Hussain, one of Pakistan’s leading television preachers, has turned into a political analyst and in a series of nightly programs, accused the missing activists of having committed blasphemy. Then he said they had defected to India. Then he singled out a number of Pakistani journalists who had spoken out for the missing, and accused them, too, of blasphemy. Mr. Hussain has worked for almost all the major channels, usually as one of their top earners. He puts lives in danger, and media owners bid for him.

ARY Network, a Pakistani TV station, recently lost a libel suit in London brought by a rival it had accused of committing blasphemy and being an Indian agent. Its defense in court: Nobody really takes our TV anchor seriously.

Never mind that when one journalist accuses another of blasphemy, he only exposes himself more to being targeted for the same thing.

A journalist friend recently told me about being picked up and taken to a safe house for a so-called debrief about his work. Three good, patriotic men from an intelligence agency told him they knew everything about his children’s school, his wife’s job, his father’s career. He was told that there were two kinds of troublemakers in this country: foreign agents and fools.

“We have seen your bank accounts and you are nobody’s agent. You appear to be a mere fool,” they told him. The message was clear: Stop being a fool. We know which school your kids go to.

I submitted an Urdu translation of one of my novels to a leading publisher a while ago. Through a mutual friend I was asked to change a few things, just to be on the safe side. Nothing was specified. I respectfully inquired what bits I should change. You are intelligent enough, I was told; you live here, you should know.

That’s the scary part, I don’t really know if I am intelligent or a fool.


=============================================================
Mohammed Hanif is the author of the novels “A Case of Exploding Mangoes” and “Our Lady of Alice Bhatti,” and the librettist for the opera “Bhutto.”

A version of this op-ed appears in print on February 7, 2017, in The International New York Times.

 

[VCheng]

http://www.dawn.com/news/1313745/ab...s-silence-we-want-a-pakistan-with-rule-of-law

Abducted Pakistani blogger breaks silence: 'We want a Pakistan with rule of law'
AFP —

An activist abducted last month has broken his silence on his weeks-long disappearance, but is refusing to point fingers at who his abductors were.

Ahmad Waqas Goraya was among five activists who vanished in Pakistan in early January.

Human Rights Watch, opposition lawmakers and activists have said their near simultaneous abductions pointed to government involvement in a country with a history of enforced disappearances.

Goraya was freed at the end of January along with at least three others and swiftly fled back to the Netherlands, where he has lived for the last decade.

"I felt I would never come back, I would never see my son and family," the 34-year-old told AFP during a phone interview in which he frequently became agitated.

Goraya, who like the other activists criticised religious extremism and the military establishment, refused to say anything about his captors or describe what happened during his ordeal.

But he angrily rejected accusations that he was a traitor for daring to be vocal about alleged abuses of power in Pakistan, insisting he was a true patriot.

"Nothing was against Pakistan, nothing was against Islam, I was critical of policies because I want to see a better Pakistan," he said, adding in a later message: "We want a Pakistan with rule of law."

Goraya also said he fears a virulent ultra right-wing campaign to paint him as a blasphemer while he was missing has followed him to Europe.

The charge, which engulfed Pakistani social media and was repeated by mainstream television hosts, is an incendiary one that can carry the death penalty. Even unproven allegations have caused mob lynchings and violence.

At least 65 people including lawyers, judges and activists have been murdered by vigilantes over blasphemy allegations since 1990, according to the Center for Research and Security Studies.

Goraya said allegations of blasphemy had surfaced on social media sites frequented by the Pakistani community in the Netherlands, prompting him to seek police advice.

"I'm looking over my shoulder ─ I have been warned by people it is a crazy world."

Silencing dissent


Pakistan has had a history of enforced disappearances over the past decade, but they have mainly been confined to conflict zones near the Afghanistan border or to Balochistan, where separatists are battling for independence.

Campaigners and opposition politicians believe the disappearances in January were part of a strategy to stamp out criticism and dissent online.

Officials have denied any role in the disappearances, which sparked protests in cities across Pakistan by progressives concerned that the space for free speech is shrinking.

But, Goraya said, they have had their intended effect.

"Hundreds of our friends deactivated their (social media) accounts, their pages," Goraya said, adding that well-known liberal blog 'Roshni' (whose name means “light” in Urdu) was among those deleted, despite the fact its administrator was based in London.

His three-year-old son, meanwhile, has been deeply traumatised by his father's weeks-long disappearance and its impact on his family.

"What can you tell a three-year-old kid, all he can see are his mother and grandparents screaming and crying," Goraya said.

He described how the once quiet child now lashes out. "He's yelling and slapping and beating ─ that's what I would say is the worst loss I suffer."

Goraya said he has spent almost a decade in the Netherlands but had come to Pakistan in late 2016 to gauge the possibility of returning to Lahore with his family.

"I could have applied for Dutch citizenship after five years but we never went that way ─ it would mean giving up my Pakistani passport," he said.

"The plan was to move permanently back to Pakistan. But now we have to replan our whole life."

 

[VCheng]

http://www.dawn.com/news/1314164/fa...ist-samar-abbas-petitions-ihc-for-his-release

Family of missing activist Samar Abbas petitions IHC for his release
SHAKEEL QARAR —

The family of Samar Abbas, one of the five activists picked up by unidentified individuals early this year, has petitioned the Islamabad High Court to secure his release.

The petition, filed by Samar's brother, Ash'ar Abbas, nominates the IG Islamabad, SSP FIA, intelligence agencies and the interior ministry as respondents in the case.

The family has pleaded that the IHC order Samar's release at the earliest, ensure his safety, and ensure that he is not tortured by his abductors.

Samar was reported missing from the federal capital since January 7, 2016.

Samar's family had lodged an application with the Ramna police station on Jan 14, and an FIR was registered on Jan 15.

An activist based in Karachi who belongs to various forums that have been raising their voice against atrocities committed against minority groups in the country, Samar is also president of the Civil Progressive Alliance Pakistan (CPAP).

According to CPAP General Secretary Syed Talib Abbas, Samar had travelled to Islamabad from Karachi on business. “He was continuously in touch with his family, but on Saturday (Jan 7), his mobile phone was switched off. The family has not heard from him since,” he said.

He said Samar, 40, is married and has two children; a boy and a girl.