| May 11, 2002 | Saturday | Safar 27, 1423 |
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Tourism blues
Young offenders’ plight
FRANCE’s decision to honour its submarine construction agreement with Pakistan despite the May 8 carnage is worthy of a mature and widely respected nation. Speaking at a press conference, French Defence Minister Michelle Alliot-Marie said her country would continue its cooperation with Pakistan in the building of three Agosta submarines. The reassuring declaration came within 24 hours of the devastation in Karachi when a suicide-bomber killed fifteen people, of whom eleven were Frenchmen. Working for a private firm, these Frenchmen were this country’s guests and had no other interest except the construction and final launching of the submarines. Many had feared that in the new context France might cancel the contract and the construction of the submarines might be left incomplete. However, by expressing its resolve to go ahead with the naval construction project, France has given the lie to any such apprehensions. Buffeted by wars and occupation in the past, France knows what adversity means. A nation less steeled by the misfortunes and vicissitudes that France has suffered and overcome would have been tempted to abandon the deal. However, it goes to the credit of the Chirac government that it decided to honour the 1994 agreement despite the May 8 tragedy.
As the French minister told a press conference, if the terrorists thought that by that crime France and Pakistan would abandon their cooperation, “they have failed; they have lost.” She reaffirmed that “our bilateral cooperation will not be affected and we will come closer.” The minister naturally expected Pakistan to ensure the safety of the Frenchmen working in Pakistan. This is a legitimate expectation. No country would like its nationals to work in Pakistan if their physical safety is in danger. At the same time, the minister said the terrorist attack had strengthened France’s resolve to fight terrorism. She also offered cooperation to Pakistan in investigating the May 8 crime. It is here that Pakistan needs to look inwards.
Terrorism has not struck Pakistan in the wake of Sept 11; it has been there since before. In fact, Pakistan became a haven for terrorists of all sorts in the wake of the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan. Guns and bombs became easily available here as the unscrupulous among the Mujahideen began selling them without being checked by the authorities. The victorious anti-Soviet Mujahideen also began a civil war in their own country and began recruiting and training Pakistanis for their factional fights. Some political parties whose cadres took part in the Afghan civil war also used their military wings to threaten elected but weak Pakistani governments and defied their writs. Sectarian and ethnic groups also profited from the availability of arms and used them against their rivals. All that Sept 11 did was to awaken Pakistan to the nature and extent of terrorism within the country.
Rooting out terrorism is in Pakistan’s paramount domestic and external interests. Terrorists operating from Pakistan have done enormous harm to this country. All of them might not be Pakistan nationals, but the fact that they were trained in this country has placed Pakistan in an awkward situation. The government, thus, has no choice but to cooperate fully with the world coalition on this issue. Al Qaeda’s hand has been suspected in the Karachi attack. But Pakistan’s enemy are both international terrorists and those operating at local levels to settle sectarian and factional scores. In cooperation with its friends and allies in the US-led coalition, Islamabad must devise a long-term strategy that must tackle both local terrorists with narrower aims and those who are part of the international network.
ALREADY reeling from the effects of September 11, Pakistan’s tourism industry will now have to experience another massive body blow following this week’s attack on a bus carrying French technicians in Karachi. A meeting of government officials in Islamabad, a day after the blast, also deliberated on this issue and came to the logical conclusion that at least in the short term the situation looked very bleak for tourism in Pakistan. The attack came at a time when the trekking season in the Northern Areas normally begins. Such incidents of violence clearly do not help attract foreign tourists, especially when there are so many other competing destinations, most of which offer many diverse forms of entertainment.
However, even without such violence, the performance of the tourism ministry or of organizations under its control like the Pakistan Tourism Development Corporation is so dismal that any significant increase in foreign tourist arrivals would have been quite unlikely. As was revealed at the Islamabad meeting, the PTDC has accumulated losses of almost Rs 90 million and over the years has seen several of its projects fall by the wayside because of lack of completion. Why should the government continue to fund the PTDC when, as time has shown, the corporation has completely failed in promoting tourism? In fact, despite the lack of any government incentives, the private sector has been the one to take the lead in attracting both domestic and foreign tourists. True, the Karachi attack is a serious setback to tourism in Pakistan but the malaise afflicting the industry — in the form of a grossly inefficient and mismanaged tourism promotion effort — has always been there and that is what the government should seek to overhaul.
THE detention of more than 4,400 juveniles in 82 jails of the country for the past many years is a dismal commentary on the plight of young offenders. Up to 3,750 of them are undertrials languishing in prisons because of delays in court proceedings. Punjab has the largest number of young offenders, including eight girls: 446 convicted and 2,515 undertrials. As many as 67 are on death row. The situation of juvenile justice is simply bizarre. Jails are overcrowded and lacking in basic facilities like toilets, clean drinking water, clean bedding, education and recreation. Exposed to the harsh penal and exploitative environment of our jails — many juveniles are kept with adults — these young ones have scant opportunity for becoming useful citizens after coming out of prison. Most juvenile offenders cannot afford lawyers and remain at the mercy of the prison staff, although under the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) the state is obliged to protect the child’s sense of dignity and guarantee legal and other assistance to him.
Hopes of improvement had earlier been pinned on the Juvenile Justice System Ordinance, promulgated in July, 2000, for safeguarding the rights of juvenile prisoners and providing relief to them. The ordinance excluded the death penalty, handcuffs unless necessary and asked for separation of juveniles from adults and setting up of exclusive juvenile courts. However, reports suggest that not much has changed since the introduction of the law, except for a few token releases from some prisons. Even its rules have not been officially notified in any of the provinces or the Islamabad capital territory. It is necessary to enforce the law in letter and in spirit to initiate reform. A suitable infrastructure for the dispensation of justice, envisaging separate courts for hearing cases of juvenile offenders and easy access to legal aid, can help avoid undue delays in deciding cases. Protection of children in police custody, release of prisoners on parole, reduction in sentences, training of jail staff on modern lines and rehabilitation of young offenders can greatly help ameliorate the plight of juvenile prisoners.