Sialkot jail tragedy

FRIDAY’S shocking hostage drama at the Sialkot district jail, which left three judges and five prisoners dead and some others injured, should be an eye-opener for jail authorities in Punjab and elsewhere in the country. The heavily armed criminals who took the ten visiting judges hostage demanded a free passage out of the prison in return for the judges’ release. The drama lasted for a good seven hours, during which one of the judges was killed by the captors, prompting commando action that concluded with two more judges and all the five hostage-takers killed. The remaining seven judges were rescued, with at least two of them sustaining critical injuries. This was for the first time that an organized crime of this magnitude took place inside a prison, and betrayed the serious lapses on the part of the prison authorities. The Punjab chief minister has done well to constitute a high-level inquiry commission to probe the incident and submit its report within 15 days.

That what was supposed to be a routine monthly judicial inspection ended up in a tragedy of this magnitude is indeed a sad commentary not only on the way we run prisons but also on our society. Over the decades, let us admit, there has been a gradual erosion of the social and moral fabric of society that has nurtured a collective disdain for orderly conduct. Often cynicism seems to stand in the way of reformist thinking and action. Clearly, society’s priorities seem lopsided, with emphasis on acquisition and conspicuous consumption. Influential people seem more interested in guarding group interests than in promoting commonweal. A general lack of discipline in public life, contempt for lawful authority and a lack of respect for norms of civil society have militated against the strengthening of social and civic institutions and led to decay all around — as seen in schools without furniture and hospitals without medicines. At the subconscious level, public officials, politicians, the police and individual citizens, all have played their role in what appears to be a trend toward a criminalization of society. The social demon thus nurtured manifests itself time and again in outrageous incidents involving acts of dispensation of justice through tribal jirgas, honour killings and, as the most recent case in point, the Sialkot jail tragedy.

Prisons in Punjab, as elsewhere in the country, are notoriously overcrowded. In Punjab, a total of 13 prisons house over 54,600 criminals against a total capacity of 10,000. A situation like this not only creates unbearable overcrowding, it also drastically reduces the ability of the jail authorities to manage the prisons in an effective manner because it has upset the ratio of the jail staff to the number of prisoners they can possibly monitor. Corruption in the rank and file of the jail staff is another critical factor, and that protects and encourages hardened criminals to violate prison rules with impunity. A series of similar incidents, though not this serious in terms of their consequences, has taken place in Lahore, Sahiwal and Faisalabad jails in not too distant a past. These are not going to stop unless a few heads roll, and a serious thought is given to reforming our outdated and woefully inadequate prison system.

A uniform code for India?

SOME 18 years after the celebrated Shah Bano case, India’s civil code is once again in the limelight. In a ruling made public on Thursday, supreme court declared that a uniform civil code for all of India’s communities was essential for promoting national integration. Giving its ruling on a petition by a Christian priest, the court saw “no necessary connection” between religion and personal law. While the aspiration of forward-looking individuals to bridge the communal divide is to be appreciated, the fact remains that coercion in any form is not the best way of advancing towards integration. The enthusiasts for a uniform civil code ought to realize the pitfalls inherent in a hurried move in that direction. India is a multi-religious, multi-ethnic state where communities jealously guard their personal laws. In this they have history’s sanction. For instance, the British or the Mughals never tried to interfere with the personal law of the numerous communities that inhabit South Asia. Muslims, who constitute one of India’s major communities, follow the injunctions of Islamic jurisprudence relating to marriage, divorce and inheritance. Any attempt to ignore these realities and devise a common civil code for Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Sikh and other communities could hinder rather than accelerate national integration.

The fact that the ruling Hindu party, Bharatiya Janata Party, should have welcomed the judgment goes to show the kind of forces that would wish to see the minorities deprived of their personal law and subjected to a uniform code crafted by the majority community. What India should realize is that a uniform code enforced from above will serve to alienate the minorities and create fissures in Indian society rather than promote voluntary integration. Better results can be achieved if those who matter could address the sense of deprivation among India’s disadvantaged minorities, and laws could be framed to give equal economic, educational and job opportunities to the minority communities.

In bad taste

THE Bush administration’s decision to release the photographs showing the dead bodies of Saddam Hussain’s sons was in bad taste. The pictures showed in gory details Uday and Qusay’s battered and bleeding faces, and made the world believe as if a bloodthirsty nation was gloating over war trophies — much like a triumphant hunter who stands one leg over his catch of the day. That Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld later admitted to bending the Pentagon’s long-standing unwritten rule of not releasing pictures of war dead is further proof that the neo-conservatives who dominate the Bush administration’s policy-making apparatus are quite capable of taking decisions that merely show a vindictive approach to the Iraqi question. Let us not here forget the hue and cry the Americans, especially Mr Rumsfeld and Ariel Sharon’s admirers in the Pentagon raised when Al Jazeera telecast images of US prisoners of war. Mr Rumsfeld has argued that the need to tell the Iraqi people that Saddam’s progeny were dead outweighed any moral consideration involved in releasing the pictures. This is disputable, especially because morality like truth cannot be sacrificed on the altar of expediency under any circumstances.

It is heartening to note though that some of the world’s media chose to exercise discretion in dealing with these pictures. Some newspapers in Pakistan, like this one, chose not to publish them at all. In Italy, a couple of leftwing papers instead printed blank spaces. The other argument used by the Americans, that the daily attacks on its soldiers by Saddam loyalists would now subside, was soon proved wrong when the very next day three US soldiers died in an ambush in Mosul, the same city where Qusay and Uday had been killed. From a tactical point of view, the US decision to display the photographs has proved counter-productive because it has inflamed and incited the very elements in Iraq — like the Fedayeen militia for instance — which it seeks to defeat.