Experts from various professions assailed systemic injustice in Pakistan on Sunday, stressing the need for legal and civil institutions to be supportive and have a holistic approach.
At a plenary session of the Imagining Futures Conference taking place at Karachi’s Habib University from August 1-4, subject experts and stakeholders discussed human rights and civil liberties in Pakistan.
As the session began exploring Pakistan’s legal landscape, National Commission for Human Rights (NCHR) Chairman Rabiya Javeri highlighted: “Knowledge is capital.”
However, she stressed, people should be aware of their rights but the “system is messed up”.
Responding to a query from the audience about whether knowledge really guaranteed protection if women such as ex-premier Benazir Bhutto and Noor Mukadam could be murdered, Javeria pointed out: “Empowerment through education or skills needs to be integrated into systems […] educational, financial, judicial systems have to support you.”
“Only 41 per cent of women raped report it, and even out of those, they back off due to societal pressure,” the NCHR chair said. Noting the low rate of conviction in rape cases (0.5pc according to a recent report), she said: “Who will they go to? System hi itna kharab hai, holnaak hai (the system itself is so broken and horrifying).”
“The system has to be responsive,” Javeri stressed, noting the need for human rights impact assessments for projects and systematic and gendered planning in budgets.
She underscored that this aspect needed to be embedded in “service providers”, which include lawyers, courts, police and teachers, among others.
“Human rights are god-given rights. Nobody can take them away.”
Javeri detailed certain cases she had come across during her role at NCHR, including one where a woman had gotten her daughter — a Master’s student in her 30s — abducted and sent to a rehabilitation centre.
The mother’s reason to do so, as told by Javeri, sent shivers down the audience’s spines: the daughter did not want to get married, had cats as pets (as if that’s somehow relevant), and a so-called doctor termed her “depressed”.
The case, Javeri noted, highlighted how ill-equipped responders and people involved in dealing with such situations are. There is a lack of regulation of mental health cases, with every other person presenting themselves as psychologists, and anybody can term someone a “pagal” (mad).
Other speakers on the panel were Police Service of Pakistan’s Superintendent (SP) Amna Baig; Karachi Bar Association Treasurer Haseebullah Panhwar; rights activist and academic Abira Ashfaq; and Air Commodore (retired) Shabbir Ahmed Khan, founder of Rashid Memorial Welfare Organisation. The session was moderated by Rana Kaiser Ishaque from the United Nations Development Programme in Pakistan.
SP Baig, who was among the first responders who arrested Noor Mukadam’s murderer Zahir Jaffer from the crime scene, pointed out that the case was still being discussed four years later “because she was educated”, compared to other “worse cases” she had seen while serving in Punjab.
While Baig believed that knowledge empowers people, she also noted that politicians and policymakers did not fully understand social equity.
“If culture is repressive, it will be reflected in your public service systems, such as police,” she said, explaining that approaching a police station was linked to a woman’s dignity in Pakistan.
“It’s how the police and LEAs (law enforcement agencies) have been portrayed over time. [But] there are women on the other side as well,” she assured the women attending the session, and suggested that it should be taught to people how to report to the police.
The police officer brought attention to a lesser-known term — tech-facilitated gender-based violence (TFGBV) — which not only means violence done using technology but also women being killed for even using social media platforms.
An image of a young girl that most people following the news have seen popped up in the audience’s minds; the recent murder of Sana Yousaf that rightly ignited fury among women across the country.
Ashfaq, a human rights activist and an associate professor at Habib University, took aim at the 26th Amendment, noting it had snatched away the suo motu power that had allowed judges to take notice of public issues.
She also underscored the lack of legal education: “We don’t know how courts, bureaucracy and parliamentary systems function. These are basic things. We haven’t gotten out of slogans to look at economic justice, climate justice.”
“You have rolled back protective laws. We think about taxing property rather than thinking that housing is a right,” Ashfaq pointed out. Similarly, she wondered, “Where is the right to food?”
Meanwhile, Panhwar, ready with his arguments, comprehensively but succinctly listed the troubles afflicting Pakistan’s judicial system.
A serious matter, but an apt chuckle from the audience as the moderator quipped “Pakistan is also a hard state” as Panhwar described the local codes as “hard laws”.
The lawyer pointed out that Articles 8 to 28 of the Constitution guaranteed several rights such as freedom of expression and movement, and that Pakistan was a signatory to various international conventions, but “we do not see any kind of implementation at all here”.
Without any hesitation, Panhwar called out the “ruling parties” for bringing the 26th Amendment that now gave them more votes to decide who gets to be a judge in the superior courts.
Retired Air Commodore Ahmed offered some words of wisdom, which one would want to blast on loudspeakers at public service institutions across the country.
The creation of Pakistan has given us complete independence, he said, but “we have denied and killed that over time through our actions and self-interest”.
He stressed, “If we are addressing a problem, then we must address it holistically.”
The retired officer also offered us, and Pakistan, hope: “All negative, all dark. But there is a silver lining; that we are talking about it.”