LIKE previous controversial laws, troubling amendments to the Anti-Terrorism Act have been ushered through the National Assembly with questionable haste.
In approving them, the ruling coalition has completely ignored the opposition’s vocal protestations and human rights observers’ growing alarm. Civil and military forces may now detain “terror suspects” for a period of three months or more based merely on “reasonable or credible information” or “reasonable suspicion”.
If the reader finds themselves wondering what, precisely, constitutes “reasonable information” and “reasonable suspicion”, they are not alone. The language of the amendment seems to have been left vague on purpose, creating conditions in which abuse is not only possible but, given past precedent, likely inevitable.
There are plenty of reasons to fear that it will be weaponised against dissidents. For starters, this regime has consistently shown scant regard for inconveniences like constitutional safeguards for citizens against arbitrary arrest or detention, or their right to a fair trial.
The judgements recently rendered by Anti-Terrorism Courts against political workers and publicly elected leaders are still fresh in the public memory. When government representatives were arguing in parliament that the opposition’s objections to the ATA amendments were ‘unreasonable’ because they were very similar to antiterrorism laws enacted elsewhere in the world, they should have been asked: where else are political workers tried and convicted as terrorists for the crime of rioting, vandalising public property and engaging in hooliganism?
That too, based on questionable evidence and suspicious testimonies given by police personnel who claimed to have infiltrated a closed-door political meeting without being detected by a single soul. And this is just a high-profile example. In restive parts of the country, locals are regularly branded as ‘terrorists’ by the authorities and pursued relentlessly, often merely for opposing state policies.
If the country’s policing and criminal justice system has been hollowed out to the point that apprehending criminals now requires holding constitutional rights in abeyance, the ruling parties should reconsider their priorities and focus on fixing what is broken.
By exposing citizens to state excesses with vaguely worded laws, enacted seemingly in obedience to unelected quarters, they are inflicting a grave injury on parliament. As public representatives, their priority should be the public’s welfare and creating resilient systems of governance.
Instead, by ceding unprecedented power and authority to those who have, time and again, appeared willing to abuse it, they are setting the country up for greater turmoil. Even without this amendment, the authorities had been detaining citizens without sufficient reason in peripheral areas.
Every day, the headlines bear testimony that such policies do not work. It is time to rethink, not reinforce them. A state that erodes its own constitutional foundations in the name of security will soon find itself neither secure nor free.
Published in Dawn, August 15th, 2025
