An ill-advised agreement

PAKISTAN’S recent commitment not to surrender US soldiers, lawmakers or civilians to the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court (ICC) is an unwise move. Even more ill-advised is the manner in which the government has decided not to announce the agreement at all, thereby wanting to avoid any public debate or discussion on the issue. There are no details available to ascertain on what basis this decision was made. It goes against the spirit of international law and conventions and national interests of Pakistan. Just because Pakistan and the United States happen to be close allies in the war against terrorism at the moment, our belief and commitment to the principle of equality of all nations should not be allowed to be weakened. The United States has never compromised on its national interests despite its close relations with Pakistan. Under a perception of threat, despite the unprecedented level of support we are offering to the Bush administration in its fight against terrorism, thousands of Pakistanis have been arrested, deported or hounded by US authorities in the post-September 11 scenario.

Despite the alliance, the US government has not exempted Pakistanis from the controversial and derogatory registration and finger-printing procedures that all adult male Pakistanis and other nationals have to go through in the United States. Scores of Pakistanis are also suffering in silence at the infamous Camp X-Ray in Guantanamo Bay as they are denied legal access or the right to an open trial while being held in detention on suspicion of involvement in some way in terrorism. In the same spirit, Pakistan should be mindful of its own national interests when making agreements or giving commitments. The concept of the International Criminal Court is a sound one. With the exception of the United States, most countries of the world support the idea of such a court where people whose crimes transcend national boundaries can be tried and given punishment where due. The International Criminal Court is, for all practical purposes, an attempt to bring to justice those people or regimes perceived to be guilty of war crimes or gross human rights violations. It is in Pakistan’s interest, given the manner in which many Muslim and Third World countries have been at the receiving end of persecution and injustice by nations, to uphold what the ICC stands for.

Since the idea of such a court was mooted, the United States has been opposed to it for understandable reasons. Given its record of interventionist excesses with and without UN authorization in the past decade alone, such a court is absolutely vital to maintain at least a semblance of sanity and order in international relations, increasingly threatened by unilateralism of one kind or another. One should not mistake this court for some hastily set up arrangement by disaffected nations trying to teach the US or any other power-flaunting nation a lesson. This is a well-conceived and structured court that has the legal and moral support of almost all of the world’s nations. To undermine its functioning and to escape censure where due, the US has been pressuring its allies to sign treaties with it under which they will not surrender US personnel to the ICC for trial. By signing such an agreement, the Pakistan government has turned away from a vital instrument of international law and justice. Given that Pakistan already has a pact with the US for extradition of each other’s nationals and military personnel held culpable, without recourse to any court of law, this new agreement seems wholly unnecessary and should be scrapped at the earliest.

Primitive jirga justice

THE cold-blooded murder of a married couple in Sindh on the orders of a tribal jirga is yet another grim reminder that the government needs to act swiftly to outlaw parallel justice systems in the country. Far too many people are being put to death as a result of decrees issued by tribal jirgas or village panchayats. These edicts are generally arbitrary and invariably discriminate against women, treating them as mere chattel to be exchanged to settle tribal disputes. Recent instances of tribal justice have included the gang-rape of a woman by men from the complaining tribe (apparently to redeem the honour of a woman from that tribe), forced marriage of under-age girls to settle a dispute, and, in several other disturbing cases, the murder of young couples who chose to marry outside tribal or community folds. Such decrees are brutal and go against the norms of natural justice. They serve only the retrogressive notions and purposes of the tribal and feudal elements of society who will go to any extent of cruelty and inhumanity to murder a lawfully wedded husband and wife to preserve their primitive customs and systems governing community life.

In this particular case, a woman and her husband were both shot dead after a jirga met in the girl’s father’s house and decided that the couple must be executed since they had married against the wishes of the tribe. After the jirga pronounced its verdict, the girl’s father was ready to pardon her but by then it was too late. In any case, the father’s change of mind can hardly absolve him of responsibility in the gruesome murders since the jirga was held at his house. The Sindh government must get to the bottom of this criminal act and order the arrest of all those involved in the heinous crime. It is also about time that the governor of the province acted on his repeated promise of pushing for a law banning honour killings. While such measures cannot be expected to end this and other tribal customs overnight, they will at least send a message to those practising this brand of tribal justice that they will not be allowed to play with the lives of innocent people.

Dangerous highways

THE death of 13 members of one family, including a young man about to get married, in a traffic accident on the Hyderabad bypass highlights once again the need for ensuring safe driving on inter-city and inter-provincial highways. The victims were travelling in a bus to Mirpurkhas to attend a marriage ceremony and their vehicle had stopped at a toll booth when a truck fully loaded with agricultural produce rammed into it. The driver of the goods vehicle must have been driving recklessly with little regard for either his or anyone else’s safety, so that he hit the stationery bus. Normally, traffic nearing a toll plaza is warned well in advance, through signs and speed-breakers, of the halt ahead and is required to slow down.

A minister did visit the eight injured survivors but such gestures can hardly make any impact as far as prevention of road tragedies is concerned. Official statistics say that almost two thirds of the 10,925 accidents reported countrywide last year happened on highways and that in 87 per cent cases the fault was rash driving. Clearly, it is time the provincial governments formulated an effective plan to make the highways safer by means of speed control. There should be a uniformly stringent application of traffic laws and regulations, backed up by stiff punishments for those responsible for causing fatal accidents, and checks on the fitness of drivers as well as vehicles.