Killing for peace

Published January 25, 2016
The writer is a lawyer.
The writer is a lawyer.

WHO was Zakaria Mohammad? A young man from Lyari killed by the police in the posh area of Defence, Karachi, on Jan 1. Leaving aside the quite unbelievable story in the FIR alleging that the police killed Zakaria in self-defence, the bottom line is that the police justify this ‘encounter’ killing on the grounds that Zakaria was killed as he had committed a robbery and was fleeing arrest.

But the so-called encounter killing of Zakaria Mohammad is not an isolated phenomenon. It is part of perhaps the biggest number of ‘encounter’ killings (year-wise) ever recorded in Karachi’s history.

Encounters rising, societal violence declining: Pakistan has never been a land untainted by encounter killings with 403 killed in 2011, 357 in 2012 and 503 in 2013 (out of which 86 were killed by police in Karachi) in the entire country. But since the start of the Karachi operation in September 2013, there has been a dramatic and radical rise with 925 encounter killings in 2014 in Karachi only (compared to 276 in the whole of Punjab) and 586 such killings in 2015 in Karachi. Moreover, the actual number of encounter killings in Karachi since September 2013 may actually be around 2,500. This rise in encounter killings shows a number of trends.


Police officers no longer deny ‘encounter’ killings; in fact, they celebrate it.


Firstly, with the increasing number of encounter killings, there is also a rise in killings of police and Rangers personnel — over 180 have been killed in the Karachi operation. Secondly, encounter killings mostly occur in poor areas like Lyari, Malir, Baldia etc. The people killed mostly belong to the poor or lower-middle classes. Thus, those who are killed have a specific class background.

Thirdly, encounter state killings are mainly justified by labelling those killed as ‘terrorist’, ‘hard-core criminals’, ‘Lyari gang war elements’, ‘political militants’ and ‘religious and sectarian extremist and militants’. Beyond this labelling and as there has been no criminal trial, there is no objective way to know who has been killed.

Fourthly, police officers no longer deny encounter killings; in fact, they celebrate it. One SSP quoted in a local newspaper spoke about the ‘immense joy’ involved in it and amazingly, the police have come up with a satirical description — ‘full fry’ for killing someone and ‘half fry’ for injuring someone.

But the rise in encounter killings is seen as justified by the decline in violence-related deaths in Karachi. There has been a 40pc decrease in violence-related deaths across Pakistan ie 7,622 in 2014 compared to 4,612 in 2015 with a greater decrease in Karachi ie 2,023 in 2014 compared to 1,040 in 2015. Therefore, societal violence against all is being replaced by state violence against the chosen labelled ones.

Legal fantasy versus reality: Article 9 of the Constitution categorically states “No person shall be deprived of life or liberty save in accordance with the law”. The term “in accordance with the law” would include the death penalty after a proper criminal trial, or persons killed in self-defence or killed in order to save someone else from imminent death.

In 1997, when the federal government granted wide powers to the law-enforcement agencies to fire/shoot at persons in order to prevent crime under the Anti-Terrorism Act, 1997 (ATA), the Supreme Court in the Mehram Ali case (1998) declared such wide fire/shoot powers unconstitutional and further declared that such deadly force could only be used if the law-enforcement agencies were fired upon ie a proportionate response. Moreover, the Supreme Court in the Sarfaraz Shah case (2011) declared that simply because someone is accused of a crime cannot be grounds to kill him.

But with the advent of the Karachi operation, amendments were made in Section 5 of the ATA and provisions were inserted in the Protection of Pakistan Act, 2014 (PPA), in 2013 and 2014, to give enlarged powers to the law-enforcement agencies to fire/shoot to prevent crimes under these laws. That such laws may be violative of the Supreme Court judgement in the Mehram Ali case is not the main issue; the real issue is that the federal legislature by enacting such harsh laws gave a clear signal to the law-enforcement agencies to solve the problem of crime and terrorism even if it involved killing people. Therefore, the constitutional utopia of the right to life under Article 9 uncomfortably coexists with the hard reality of the right to kill powers under the ATA and PPA.

Killing without dissent: Why is there no substantive dissent against this? Three basic reasons can be identified. Firstly, in order to resolve the murderous anarchy which prevailed in Karachi between 2007 and 2013, the people of the city have made a Hobbesian pact with the state by surrendering their individual rights for peace and protection. In other words, the state can kill as long as it ensures peace. Therefore, tragically, these killings have democratic roots reinforced by the immediate reduction in crime and terrorism.

Secondly, with a neo-liberal Nawaz government in power believing in a minimalist state and the military elite dominating internal security policy, Pakistan is making the transition from a failed semi-welfare state to a semi-successful model of democratic authoritarianism with extrajudicial killings as a key tool of control.

Thirdly, due to the continuous (although misplaced) criticism of the judiciary for being soft on criminals and terrorists, the judiciary has adopted a strategic silence against such killings. In short, the judiciary is not willing to act against the democratic killing consensus.

Killing a couple of thousand people may have reduced crime and terrorism in the short run but history teaches us that the problem of crime and terrorism cannot be successfully tackled without creating some kind of an egalitarian society for the young, poor and powerless, who are trapped in this circle of crime and terrorism. Tragically, the rich and the state power elite think that their Karachi killing policy will prove history wrong.

The writer is a lawyer.

Published in Dawn, January 25th, 2016

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