| August 29, 2003 | Friday | Jumadi-us-Sani 30, 1424 |
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Honour killings
Oil spill response
PRESIDENT Pervez Musharraf’s assertion in Hyderabad the other day that once the Legal Framework Ordinance goes, parliament and the provincial legislatures will automatically cease to exist is a plain non sequitur. First of all, the opposition has not denounced or rejected the LFO as a whole. It objects to the palpably undemocratic components of the controversial document and is willing to have the agreed elements duly incorporated into the 1973 Constitution provided the document’s amending procedure, which remains wholly in tact, is duly followed. The LFO has been a hotly contested issue from day one. As such no sanctity can be claimed to be attached to it in the eyes of the general public. It is, in any case, a little odd in our context to talk of the sanctity of arbitrarily drawn up documents when our basic document has been repeatedly defiled. None of the constitutions under which we have been governed in the past 56 years — the 1935 act as adapted at independence, the 1956 constitution, the 1962 Ayub constitution and the much battered 1973 Constitution — provided for or allowed seizure of power by the army as a way of carrying on the country’s government. And yet Pakistan has experienced four military coups, if usurper Yahya’s takeover too is counted as one.
Too much is being made of the fact that all parties had agreed to take part in the October general elections within the parameters laid down by the LFO. The Government of India Act, 1935, was seen by all important sections of Indian political opinion as a constitutional instrument designed to perpetuate imperialist domination. Nevertheless, this did not prevent the major political parties from participating in the elections held under the act and from even assuming ministerial responsibility in the provinces. To objections raised against this policy by critics, Congress Party leaders had replied that they were going into the legislatures not to work the British-made constitution but to wreck it from within. Subsequent developments did prove that by taking part in elections under the 1935 act, the political parties had assumed no political or moral commitment to uphold that law.
Ultimately, therefore, the argument is not about technicalities, and to shroud it in technicalities will be seen as only an attempt to perpetuate military dominance of the country’s affairs. What events since last October have clearly demonstrated is that the swell of public opinion against continued interference with the country’s political process is rising in all the provinces. It can be seen in the protests over the water issue, the stocking of key civilian posts with military men, concern over the lack of accountability that marks the conduct of our foreign and economic policies, and a myriad of smaller happenings. This is a dangerous situation that calls for the army and its hand-crafted party to abandon their take-it-or-leave-it attitude and engage in meaningful and productive negotiations with the opposition to get us out of the constitutional woods into which we have strayed.
THE Sindh governor has done well to send draft amendments to the federal government recommending that the Pakistan Penal Code be amended to define “honour killing” as premeditated murder. The amendments also call for awarding capital punishment to individuals other than the murderer who abet in or instigate an honour killing. This will help check the tribal custom of karo-kari in Sindh and similar practices elsewhere in the country that justify killing persons, specially women, suspected of having illicit relations or those daring to marry of their own free will. Under the existing law, honour-killers, even if they are arrested and arraigned in a court of law tend to get away with light sentences after convincing the court that the murder was a crime of passion and not a premeditated act. The potential for revengeful acts inherent in such criminal practices has never been given enough attention.
Apart from ingrained and tribal customs, statistics collected by rights groups over the past two decades indicate that crimes against women and minorities have seen a systematic rise because of the misuse and exploitation of the Hudood Ordinances, the Law of Evidence, Qisas and Diyat Ordinance, and the Blasphemy Law. These tend to encourage an emotionally charged individual or a group of people to play the moral police and go about administering justice on their own, often to settle personal scores. This happens even before the accused person has been investigated by police or brought before a court. The killing of a person accused of blasphemy inside a Lahore prison last year and the recent death of a woman while in custody at the same prison are just two cases in point. Laws that are so subject to flagrant abuse were based on the whims of a military dictator who used religion to win public applause. Now with elected legislatures in place that have an unprecedented number of women MPs, the government should have the moral courage to have all such legislation submitted for scrutiny by parliament. The ambit of the proposed legislation on karo-kari should be widened to include all forms of arbitrary justice that are not covered by the laws of the land.
THE usefulness of a 24-member committee formed to oversee the government’s response to the oil spill off Karachi’s coast will depend on its ability to deal with the crisis promptly and effectively. The committee will meet every day to find ways to contain and reverse the impact of the oil spill. However, it has only government officials as its members, and many of them have so far demonstrated little knowledge of fighting marine pollution caused by an oil spill. Ideally, experts from the private sector and, if necessary, academics with some technical knowledge should have been co-opted so that any action plan put forward would have the benefit of input from a wide variety of sources. Furthermore, the committee should have also included representatives of NGOs familiar with the social and economic consequences of such disasters, such as the battering endured by local fishermen.
Since around 12,000 tonnes of oil are still inside the ship, the committee will have to formulate both a short-term and a long-term plan to minimize the impact of any further leaks and to neutralize the damage already done. It will need to improve coordination between the various agencies taking part in the clean-up operation. Key short-term goals should include a realistic estimate of the ecological damage and increased health costs to residents of the affected areas. Compensation for daily wage earners who made a living by selling rides or foodstuff along the beach should also be considered.
Even more importantly, those government officials whose negligence allowed an apparent case of a grounded ship to become the country’s worst environmental disaster must be publicly named and made to pay for their criminal oversight. In the longer term, an emergency response plan should be put in place, especially to deal with crises of this nature. The Pakistan section of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) says the draft of a national oil spill contingency plan has been lying unapproved for some time. It should be immediately reviewed and implemented.