| August 29, 2005 | Monday | Rajab 23, 1426 |
Mumbo-jumbo of insecure societies
Trust deficit
Crossing the road
A BILLBOARD sign near the Do Talwar roundabout in Clifton has a classic one-liner that reads, “Why did the chicken cross the road? Because the underpass took forever...!”
A debate has begun with the decision of the Supreme Court of Pakistan in the case of Sarabjit Singh. According to the record, he was arrested in August 1990 near the Kasur border. Nine days later, he was produced before a magistrate as ‘Manjit Singh’, a man wanted for acts of terrorism in Pakistan. The FIRs filed against Manjit or Sarabjit do not mention any accused persons by name; they were ‘blind’ FIRs.
Before the magistrate, Manjit confessed to his crime but later denied it all during trial. He maintained that his name was Sarabjit Singh and that he had often crossed the Kasur border, smuggling alcohol. No identification parade was held and he was awarded the death penalty by the Anti-Terrorist Court in 1991, based on the original confession he had made before a magistrate. His sentence was upheld by the High Court and later by the Supreme Court.
Singh’s family found his whereabouts in 2000 through human rights networks. Although Singh could not afford a legal counsel, he was provided with one as soon as trial started and subsequently at every stage of the case. His lawyers defended him with competence and care, but they could not convince the courts that a dubious confession could not be made the sole basis of awarding the death penalty. His last recourse can only be to file a review petition with the Supreme Court, and then a mercy petition to the president of Pakistan.
The imposition of the death penalty on Mr. Sarabjit Singh is not unusual in the context of Pakistan’s legal system, but the case is unique, as it has sparked off interest in the plight of foreign prisoners. The issue is made larger by touching upon the fundamental right to life. India and Pakistan have not abolished the death penalty and, at least in the case of Pakistan, the safeguards and restrictions applicable to capital punishment under customary international law have hardly been observed. According to the United Nations safeguards and restrictions, capital punishment can only be imposed as a measure of last resort. It is applicable to the most serious of crimes and does not apply to children under the age of 18, expectant mothers, mentally deranged people and to the very old.
As the execution of capital punishment is irreversible, due process has to be established at every step, including competent legal assistance and the absolute independence of the judiciary. Under customary international law, mandatory death penalty is considered highly improper. In Pakistan, these safeguards are flouted with impunity. There are a number of laws which allow for capital punishment in cases other than the ‘most serious’ of offences. For example, the laws against ‘blasphemy’, ‘attempting to wage war against Pakistan’, ‘attempted mutiny’, ‘possessing a dangerous drug’, ‘rape’ and ‘zina’ are some of these offences. Mandatory capital punishment is also prescribed for a number of offences, thus placing the judiciary in a difficult position. It can either acquit or send the accused to the gallows.
It is often argued that capital punishment is a deterrent to crime. This assertion is neither backed by empirical research, nor has this measure proven to be imperative for the prevention of crime. As of May 2000, the death penalty, in law or practice, had been abolished in 108 countries while 87 have retained it. The former include the members of the European Union, which have possibly the lowest crime rate in the world. The ‘abolitionists’ are not confined to western borders alone. In South Asia, Nepal and Sri Lanka have abolished capital punishment. Therefore, this penalty has a nexus neither with the crime rate nor with any particular society. There is unanimity, however, in the opinion that it is not the death penalty but the certainty of punishment and delivery of justice that erode impunity and bring down the level of crime.
Pakistan has some of the highest figures of prisoners sitting in solitary confinement on death row — as has been the fate of Sarabjit Singh for the last 15 years. In 2003, there were 25 women and 5,790 men on death row in Punjab alone, out of a total of around 6,500. For the last five years, 40 to 50 prisoners are hanged annually. Mercifully, children can no longer be awarded the death penalty after the promulgation of the Juvenile Justice System Ordinance 2000. Reports on the death penalty of juveniles shows that Pakistan was amongst the six countries of the world that executed children until 2000. Iran, Yemen, and the United States continue to violate the right to life of child prisoners.
Lessons against the imposition of the death penalty in Pakistan have never been learnt. A former prime minister was hanged; subsequently, even a judge on the bench admitted that according to the law the ex-PM could not have been awarded death. One judge confessed on record that it was not a legal necessity but a political one to hang the former prime minister. Justice Khudabaksh Marri in his book A judge may Speak narrates the hair- raising incident where a man was hanged by a military court in Quetta on charges of murder in spite of the alleged victim’s appearance in court to assert that he was still alive. But these are not just stories of the past. Kaneez Bibi, a mentally handicapped woman, is awaiting execution. Her mercy petition was rejected by the president in February 2000, and she has been shunted back and forth between the Lahore Mental Hospital and the Kot Lakhpat jail. Manjit Singh is fortunate in having a family that has threatened to immolate itself unless his life is spared. If only the families of other condemned prisoners would follow their example. It is indeed encouraging that the prime minister of India has agreed to take up the cause of Manjit Singh, as his life must be saved. It would however be even better if he took the laudable step of abolishing capital punishment in India, so that we could then follow his example. In there meeting, he and President Musharraf could perhaps agree to a protocol that would release hundreds of Pakistani and Indian prisoners and safeguard the future of thousands of others. According to official figures, 663 Pakistani prisoners and fishermen are in Indian jails while 576 Indians are imprisoned in Pakistan. This is obviously just the tip of the iceberg. A number of prisoners lie stateless, and receive no counsellor access — either because the host country is too preoccupied with bureaucratic red tape or because our embassies are caught up in arranging VIP visits. The stories of Miti, Tinapika and Shabnam at present confined at Kot Lakhpat jail are pathetic. Having served their sentences, they cannot be released, because neither country will accept them as their citizens. After years of incarceration, they have lost their memories and can only vaguely remember their family members and their addresses.
Instead of pursuing further politicization of the issue, or attempting to seek some sort of reciprocal arrangement, the governments of the two countries should take more immediate, humane measures. If there is any way for both nations to emerge victorious, it must certainly be this. —Asma Jahangir
IN THE last decade of her life the late Sirimavo Bandaranaike was afflicted by a paralytic condition that resulted in her toes curling into the sole of her feet. She had to be carried to her drastically curtailed official duties as prime minister of Sri Lanka in a wheelchair.
Mrs Bandaranaike’s illness was compounded by a raging family feud between her pampered son Anura Bandaranaike and her politically astute and far more popular daughters, one of whom became president of the island nation.
Out of pique for the mother’s political anointment of Chandrika Kumaratunga, the younger of Sirimavo’s two daughters, Anura joined the rival UNP, the party led by Mrs Bandaranaike’s arch-foe Junius Jayewardene. Jilted by his UNP colleagues, Anura was later given sanctuary in the family enterprise called the Sri Lanka Freedom Party. And so today he is the foreign minister of Sri Lanka.
Anura, like so many other Sri Lankan politicians, has been a great devotee of Satya Sai Baba, a popular South Indian Hindu saint with an Afro-coiffure. Like the Baba’s other fellow devotees, usually a rich and influential lot, the Bandaranaike scion too would wear wrist watches and display gifts presented to him by the saint who lives in the remote southern town of Puttaparthi, near Bangalore.
It was on the advice of her estranged son that Mrs Bandaranaike gave up on her range of treatments, from Kerala’s mud bath to Singapore’s acupuncture, and flew in a special plane to meet the popular guru. As luck would have it, the Baba exuded absolute confidence that the prime minister of Sri Lanka would be up and about and walking from her home to her office within 10 days.
Twenty days passed. Then a month and several more went by. But Mrs Bandaranaike’s discomfort with her toes only became worse. Finally the opposition Sinhalese newspapers got wind of what would otherwise be a minor personal embarrassment to the prime minister and flashed the story as a scandal.
“Leader of a Buddhist nation subscribes to Hindu mumbo-jumbo” proclaimed one Sinhalese headline, underscoring a sensitive issue that had the potential of becoming a major political potboiler. If the issue did not pick up steam, however, it was only because the opposition parties too had their fair share of Buddhist leaders subscribing to ‘Hindu mumbo-jumbo’.
My experience of the Sai Baba’s completely besotted followers came in Colombo on a day when rumours swirled in India of statues of Lord Ganesha drinking milk all across the country and beyond. A Hindu temple to the elephant-headed deity in Colombo had ostensibly picked up the rumour. Promptly, there was a mile-long queue of Sri Lankan devotees, both Tamil Hindus and Sinhalese Buddhists rushing and ready to feed the statues a pint or two of fresh cow milk.
In the temple, ensconced on a large eastern wall was a portrait of the Sai Baba, obscured by a film of ash that plastered his beaming face. The devotees claimed it was sacred ash that appeared from nowhere to symbolize the saint’s miraculous prowess. Since the route to the Ganesha idol in the temple complex was crowded, I was ushered, as were the other journalists, to another marble statue, that of Nandi, Lord Shiva’s mythical bull. The statue drank spoonfuls of milk, including some from my hand. I saw it happening but remained unconvinced by the bizarre logic of what was purportedly a living proof of the India-wide miracle.
Rumours and superstitious societies have an old relationship. For many years leading Muslims clerics of Lucknow were convinced and got their followers to believe it too that Astronaut Neil Armstrong had never been to the moon. Galileo died a frustrated man for claiming to the Pope and his fellow Catholics that it was the earth that went round the sun and not the other way round.
Rumours have played positive and negative part in a nation’s destiny, such as the rumour of the greased cartridges in the 1857 rebellion. Curiously, ever since that fateful moment rumours of dead cows and pigs in temples and mosques have led to instant retribution by the stronger side against the weaker in the Hindu-Muslim equation.
Of course rumours are often deliberately circulated to manipulate a situation, for example the stock markets, thus betraying the utterly fragile nature of a supposedly key pillar of our economy.
Rakshabandhan, observed earlier this month, is an Indian festival that sees sisters tying ‘rakhis’ or decorative strings on the wrists of their brothers. It is a festival that exults in the bonding of India’s brothers and sisters with each other.
The festivities were marred in Gujarat last year by rumours of deaths due to jinxed rakhis. There were reports of people throwing their rakhis away when women called their brothers to tell them about the ‘curse’. This followed a rumour that those with the sacred strings around their wrists would die at 10pm. The mass hysteria was baffling — even intelligent, educated people fell prey. Of course, reports that several brothers were dying in hospitals after meeting with strange accidents were found to be baseless. This was last year.
Earlier this month, in Mumbai, still recovering from its recent rain havoc, 18 people died in a stampede right in the middle of the deluge because of a rumour. Reports said rumours of a reservoir burst and tsunami scare led to the stampede. Seven children and seven women were among the dead.
Not surprisingly, police said of the 17 arrested, six persons were picked up from a car when they were going around spreading rumours of impending disasters in slum clusters. Apparently the rumour-mongers were planning to loot the houses after the residents fled in fear. No such motive could be ascribed to the rumours of Ganesha’s milk-drinking spree or the mysterious ash covering the Sai Baba’s portrait in Colombo. So what was the genesis or the purpose behind these alleged miracles? Keep wondering.
AN INDIA-PAKISTAN Parliamentarians conference is likely to be held in New Delhi in December at the instance of the South Asia Free Media Association (Safma) “to carry forward the continuing dialogues at people-to-people level between the two countries”.
Announcing this, a Safma spokesman said the dates for the conference would be finalized once the schedule of the elections in Bihar becomes clear. This would be the second meet of Parliamentarians from both countries to be hosted by Safma, which had earlier organized a similar meet in Islamabad in May.
In view of the trust deficit that has always characterized the operation of the Election Commission of Pakistan, it should have made extra efforts to finalize and publish the results of the local body elections at the earliest. The delay in the announcement of the results in districts in which the local body elections were held on Aug 18 can only lend weight to the view that some kind of political engineering was under way.
But the acting chief election commission appears to be so impervious to criticism that news stories about widespread rigging in the first phase of the election did not make him constitute inquiry tribunals. Similarly, during a visit to Karachi on Aug 18, he failed to see the hoardings inscribed with statements against the former city nazim — a violation of the code of conduct he had promulgated. He recently insisted that killings that occurred in armed clashes between political rivals could not be said to be poll-related.
So, will someone kindly tell the public what is fair and what is foul?
The chattering class
Someone who has two interests — meeting people and collecting pieces of art — says that he pays two visits to an art gallery if one of his favourite painters’ work is on display. On the day of inauguration, he runs into so many people that he can’t really enjoy viewing the paintings. Also the artist is too busy exchanging greetings with visitors, so he or she is not available for any meaningful discussion. So, serious art lovers make it a point to stay away on the opening day of an exhibition.
A ghazal and classical music buff in Karachi has somewhat similar views to offer. “It’s sad that many people, including some sitting in the first two or three rows, chat endlessly, while the artiste is performing, which is why I have stopped going to concerts. I’d rather get the live recording later and enjoy it in solitude… A few years ago I was in Delhi when vocalist Kishori Amonkar was performing in a large hall. Suddenly, she spotted a couple, in the last few rows, talking to each other; she scolded the two conversationalists ‘Why don’t you go home and talk?’ she said. The couple was too embarrassed to stay in the hall for too long. Ustad Vilayat Khan once picked up his sitar and walked out of the concert when he saw a section of the audience engaged in an animated discussion. On the way to the exit, he returned the envelope containing the advance money to the organizers. It was only after the organisers apologized and assured Vilayat Khan of pin-drop silence that the Ustad agreed to stage a comeback.”
In Karachi even if the organizers of a function request the audience to switch off their mobile phones, the proceedings are invariably interrupted by the sing-song ringing of cellphones. Such is our fascination for modern technology.
Old wine in old bottle
Newsmen working for foreign wire agencies have had a hard time explaining to their editors what badla financing — also known as carry-over transaction — is. And now they have more explaining to do.
There is such a subtle difference — if at all — between the outgoing badla financing and the recently implemented continuous finance system that the uninitiated can’t tell one from the other, though the latter is reportedly based on the model of an obscure Turkish bank.
But one thing hasn’t changed. First, the influence wielded by stock exchange brokers remains undiminished. Second, small investors are still vulnerable to the manipulation of brokers.
For instance, previously, badla financiers could extend high mark-up loans up to Rs12 billion. The cap has now been upped to Rs25 billion. Similarly, badla was available in seven scrips in the past. Now it is available in 14 scrips. The only positive point of the continuous finance system is that it is operational all the time, so that a sudden withdrawal of badla financing does not leave unguarded investors high and dry.
It is widely believed that it was the March crisis in the Karachi Stock Exchange that caused former managing director Moin Fudda not to seek re-appointment. And rumour has it that he would be accommodated in the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan, the regulator of the country’s capital markets. In that case, the influential brokers who made his life hell during the March crisis and afterwards will have enough opportunity to repent.
Shrinking wallets
Alady decided one day last week to go on a shopping spree on Tariq Road after work. At a time when the streets should have been packed to capacity, she was surprised to get a parking spot quite easily. She also discovered that she did not have to wait too long for her turn at the shops, and that the salesmen looked more bored than harassed — as if they had had nothing to do all day. One could not call the atmosphere lethargic, but it was certainly not bustling either.
There could be a number of reasons for this. All the women had probably gone home to wait for the return of tired husbands from office, or the opening of malls at several points has given many access to one-stop shopping. Moreover, shops have cropped up near most residential areas selling almost everything. People no longer have to venture far from home in order to procure what they want, or even to window shop.
But perhaps the overriding factor is that wallets are getting leaner by the day. Inflation has hit double-digit figures and the poor and the middle class are feeling the crunch. The price of almost every item on the list seems to have gone up — from sugar and mutton to petrol and school fees. Few can afford to while away time on Tariq Road and other shopping centres?
— By Karachian
email: karachi_notebook@hotmail.com
Put up by restaurant, the sign derives some humour from the chaotic situation created because of the mammoth construction of the underpass in progress in the area since the past five months or so. But for those who commute around the area, there is nothing amusing while crossing the road at any point around the Clifton Cross.
To drive from the roundabout towards Mai Kolachi or up to the Boating Basin, only a narrow side lane is available which is a makeshift dirt track frequented by trucks, buses and all other public and private vehicles. The ensuing jam because of the narrow space and the poor road condition is difficult to describe, but it gives a pain in the seat. And if one needs to go over to the opposite side towards Bath Island, there is no road available unless one goes up to Boating Basin and takes a U-turn along that road, tracing a good 10-minute circuit for a destination which is a stone’s throw away.
It is difficult to gauge the technical expertise and the IQ-levels of the managers involved in handling the underpass project. Did they expect the vehicles to grow wings and fly over the closed areas when they were planning this gigantic project? Did the planning stage include the input of the traffic police at all?
The only traffic provision that was made was to put up a sign or two (and that too a good month after the construction began) stating; ‘Road closed; sorry for the inconvenience; by order of the FWO.’ That’s where the government’s obligation to the taxpayers ended. No directions given to ease the traffic towards alternative routes and no traffic police stationed to ease the subsequent jam of cars. The makeshift narrow routes, which the commuters themselves discovered by frantically searching for ways out of the mess around this highly frequented intersection, are fraught with potholes, and open gutters. The routes are so rocky that they not only reduce the flow but give one a feeling of riding on horse back.
Adding insult to injury, since the day the Schon Circle was dug deep, the gas lines, phone lines, sewerage and water lines in the area keep needing to be fixed almost regularly, and hence most alternate routes are now also dug up along the construction area, cutting off all relief points for cars to reach point B from point A. A rude shock awaits one every other morning when one discovers a service lane ‘closed for entry because of repair work - sorry for the inconvenience!’ The chicken which crossed the road - for whatever reasons - at least fared better than the suffering commuters of Clifton, most of whom still haven’t found ways to cross the road and whose work ‘on the other side’ still remains pending.
Questions arise as to what it was that the KPT actually undertook when they assumed responsibility for making and developing the Schon Circle underpass. Did it even remotely include measures of safety and consideration for the citizens’ needs while the development project was underway? And with the Army’s Frontier Works Organization involved in ‘handling the project’ it is still more astounding as to how such a prominent project was handled so shabbily.
The area around the construction site, besides creating its share of commuting trauma, is not even safeguarded suitably as there is no proper barricade to separate the thoroughfare and the construction work. In peak hours when the cars are all trying to edge into every little space available - specially in the rickety and pot-holed lane passing in front of the Mideast hospital - it wouldn’t take much for a car to loose its grip on the road and topple over into the ravine below. With security arrangements absent, pedestrians also try to hop over the dug up boundaries to find their short cuts and they are most susceptible to such impending disasters. Last week, a boy actually did fall into one such construction site near a nullah on Sharah-i-Quaideen and his body could not be found even after hours of searching with the help of bulldozers. But then, body count on the streets of Karachi has never been a matter of national concern. Certainly not enough to raise safety concerns for its citizens.
If the underpass project could not have been broken into phases of development, at least alternate roads should have been paved first to allow for smooth traffic flow. I would suggest that someone try something like this at the Zero Point or at the Blue Area junction in Islamabad and then see the reactions that follow. Why only in Karachi is such impassivity shown for citizens’ well being?
With the city government currently in a state of suspension there is no one accountable for the predicament of the citizens.