Speaking at a seminar on human rights organised by the Amnesty International at a local hotel on Thursday, she said politically motivated definitions of terrorism could be misleading. She opined that one person’s terrorist could be another person’s freedom fighter.
Terming respect for human rights the key to the development of the civil society, she stressed that human rights should not be compromised in the name of security, as was being done these days in some western countries that earlier had glaring human rights record.
She said that after the Sept 11 incidents the United States and the United Kingdom had taken certain steps and were formulating certain laws under which people could be tried by military courts where the accused could not even have defence lawyers and, in certain cases, even the right to appeal did not exist.
She said that such laws and steps could be expected from the Third World military dictators of the 1960s, and one could not expect such laws to be formulated by the civilised world in the year 2001. But it was happening.
She said that now the leaders of the western countries, might look the other way at the reports and incidents of the human rights violations in Egypt, China, Chechnya and Pakistan that were supporting the allied forces.
Ms Khan who has also worked with the United nations High Commissioner for Refugees, said that in the western countries fear against refugees and foreigners had been created and spread, and a hostile attitude was being adopted against Asian, particularly Muslim, immigrants.
She said it was a horrible scenario as such an attitude would result in a backlash in Asian countries and one such incident was the Bahawalpur massacre.
She urged the people to make efforts to improve the situation as the Amnesty International believed that ordinary people could bring about extraordinary changes.
She said that the AI was for ethical globalisation where the rights of the poor were not violated, the rich did not hold the lion’s share and justice was done.
Earlier, other speakers said that incidents of human rights violations were common in Pakistan. They said that domestic violence was a global phenomenon but the its prevalence was more common in the developing countries.
They said that a huge number of women were murdered by their fathers, brothers, husbands and other male family members under the garb of honour killings and only a few cases were reported.
They said that the previous martial government had introduced various laws- the Hudood Ordinance, the Law of Evidence, etc- which were discriminatory towards women and minority communities.
They said that the international community also took selective steps depending on in which part of the world human rights violations occurred.
They maintained that globalisation was against human rights as the rich countries were draining the resources of the poor countries. They said that over 1.3 billion people earned less than a dollar a day, while 80 countries had become more poorer now than they were a decade back.
Dr Mirza A Azhar, Dr S. Jaffer Ahmad, Iqbal A. Detho and others spoke on the occasion. Syed Shamsuddin read out a paper by Zahida Hina who could not attend the seminar.