ISLAMABAD High Court Chief Justice Athar Minallah has written in an order that suppressing voices of dissent or discouraging raising of grievances against the state amounted to sedition. These emphatic words are contained in the order issued after the hearing of a petition on a case regarding police action against protesting students in Islamabad. The students had gathered in Islamabad recently against the alleged enforced disappearance of their fellow student Hafeez Baloch. The police used violence against these peaceful protesters and also registered criminal cases against them. The IHC chief justice has done the right thing by chastising the local police and administration officials and reminding them that their constitutional duty is to protect the rights of citizens. Unfortunately, such harsh ways of dealing with citizens has become the norm for the police and administration officials. This attitude is a hangover from the colonial times that the bureaucracy refuses to discard despite knowing that the relationship between the state and the citizen has changed since those times. Such abhorrent behaviour becomes all the more troublesome when it is employed against people who are already nursing grievances against the state. These students from Balochistan were raising genuine questions about enforced disappearances that have become a festering wound in the province. Instead of unleashing violence on them, the police and administration should have taken extra care to address their concerns to the best of their abilities. By using force, they have reinforced the perception that the state willingly persecutes those considered weaker.

The IHC chief justice must be commended for admonishing these state functionaries and providing justice to the victims of police brutality. However, such incidents will continue unless there is a genuine change in how the state treats its own citizens. Reforming the bureaucracy is a goal that remains unfulfilled despite claims by all governments, including the present one. Police reform is also an issue that has quietly been buried. The result is a continuation of a culture that perpetuates the role of the state as a predator and not a protector. The courts are doing well to balance this state high-handedness by enforcing the rights of citizens. This in itself acts as a deterrent and ensures that the state is held to account for such excesses. A long-term solution is however required if we want the state to shed its mediaeval approach and transition into a modern one.

Published in Dawn, March 6th, 2022