02 February 2004	Monday	10 Zilhaj 1424

ISLAMABAD, Feb 1: Human rights can be a tough job these days if you happen to be an American. After the US campaign in Afghanistan and Iraq, the last thing that people in this part of the world want to listen to from an American is a lecture on human rights.

Somehow, Brad Adams, executive director for the Asia division at the New York-based Human Rights Watch, does not fit into this scenario. He is an America and yet, metaphorically speaking, a different kind of American.

In an interview with Dawn during his short stay in Islamabad last week, he was critical of the state of human rights in Pakistan, the role of the military in hanging on to power, the hidden and not-so-hidden curbs on the press, the silencing of politicians and the pressures confronted by the judiciary. But, in the same breath, Mr Adams was equally critical of the US for its mistreatment of prisoners in Guantanamo Bay, bombing civilians in Afghanistan, and letting President George Bush undermine the rule of law in the US.

He does not have to prove his credentials, particularly after having worked assiduously for human rights for years, including a five-year stint with the United Nations in Cambodia. But that helps to understand his objectivity.

Mr Adams believes that the Commonwealth should insist on human right guarantees before allowing Pakistan back into its fold. He said it was up to the Commonwealth to decide whether it wanted to allow re-entry of Pakistan. It professed to be a "community of democracies", which was why it had disbarred Pakistan and Zimbabwe in the first place. "If it has to readmit Pakistan, there is no reason why it should not ask for specific, tangible safeguards against human rights violation."

Bran Adams, a lawyer by profession, wrote to the Commonwealth last year to take cognizance of the state of human rights while considering Pakistan's readmission. He thinks Pakistan needs to cross more goalposts before it passes as a normal, functional democracy, even after the passage of the 17th amendment. "You see, President Gen Pervez Musharraf himself apologized on the way the referendum was held," he said. "Unless elections are genuinely held, the roots of democracy do not get strengthened."

He believed that the military in Pakistan still had "far too many powers, which was not healthy for democracy. It's not good for building a pluralistic society, for evolving a system of checks and balances. For such goals to be achieved the military needs to be goaded back to the barracks."

Mr Adams was in Islamabad on a week-long visit during which he assessed the state of human rights in Pakistan after meeting a number of politicians, government officials, journalists and human rights activists.

He stressed the need to build institutions, particularly the judiciary. He said that the Asian Development Bank had allocated $350 million for judicial reforms in Pakistan. "Unless the government and the military back them, much of that money will be wasted."

The tragedy, he said, was that Pakistan had world-class lawyers and judges, as impressive as anywhere in the world. "But they are not being allowed to do their job," he said while quoting from his experience in Cambodia, where a similar effort failed because the military and police did not back the reforms. "You cannot have a normal judiciary in an environment of intimidation."

He was equally concerned about media freedom. He was appalled at the way journalist Mubashar Zaidi's picture was shown on state-run television. Mr Zaidi was assisting a US journalist in interviewing a religious leader in a way that did not violate the law. But the incident was used to prove a theory propounded by certain circles that some Pakistani journalists are basically anti-state.

Reporters Sans Frontiers, Mr Adams said, ranked Pakistan very low among countries where media freedom was concerned. "Nobody edits their copies, but editors get phone calls threatening consequences if they do not exercise self-censorship," he said. "Maybe that's why we see strong opinion, but less news and investigative journalism."

He was cautious not to be drawn into a comparison of Pakistan and India on human rights. "We can't compare the two countries because of their different cultural context and different history. "But we are on record on saying that there has been a deterioration of the rule of law in India," he said. "There have been far too many killings of a suspicious nature taking place in India. There have been thousands of human rights violations in the Indian Punjab and the North East, resulting in many deaths."

He was particularly disturbed by the carnage in Gujarat, where, he believed, the Indian state was involved in excesses against Muslims. But then India, he said, had a National Commission of Human Rights with a track record of showing some independence, as during the Gujarat violence.