Reign of terror in Kashmir
Saman Malik

A ROUNDTABLE conference was held at Institute of Regional Studies Islamabad on 25 March 2007. At the conference, Dr. Ghulam Nabi Fai, Executive Director Kashmiri American Council, Washington, also, was invited to express his views on Kashmir.
He expressed his disappointment on Indian government’s attitude towards the Kashmir problem. He lamented that Indian leaders had backed out of all the promises, they made to Mirwaiz Omar Farooq. These promises included zero tolerance of human-rights abuses in Kashmir, releasing of all persons who did not take up gun, providing information about thousands of missing persons and repealing laws that grant indemnity to Indian soldiers.
Recently, Indian army has ordered summary general court martial of Major General A. K. Lal (GOC, 3 Infantry Division) for insulting modesty of a lady officer. However, no action has ever been taken againstjawans and officers who routinely commit criminal acts against Kashmiri women. On March 28, 2008, 18 J&K Rifles and 16 Rajput (under 28 Infantry Brigade) conducted a ‘rehearsal to apprehend militants’. During the ‘rehearsal’, hundreds of Kashmiri women were raped and several houses burnt. Kashmiri leaders who protest are arbitrarily detained. Cases are registered against them for’ receiving money from Pakistan’, ‘indulging in hawala transactions’, ‘adding and abetting militants’, so on. The chief spokesman of Hizbul Mujahideen has been arrested for voicing indignation against Indian army’s atrocities in Kashmir.
India claims to be the “world’s greatest democracy”. But, its ‘shiny’ face has been disfigured by its repressive laws enforced in occupied Kashmir. Gitmo and Abu Ghraib are in common knowledge. But, few people know that India’s draconian laws allow custodial deaths, rapes and torture by its army and security personnel. Human-rights organisations, including India’s National Human Rights Commission are debarred from inquiring into cases of rights’ abuse by Indian army and security forces.
India is yet to ratify the United Nations’ Convention against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment or Punishment. As such, the reign of terror by India’s so-called ‘law-enforcing agencies’ has continued unabated. India’s black laws, applied to occupied Kashmir and other states, include: (a) Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA), 1967, (b) Jammu and Kashmir Public Safety Act, 1978, (c) Armed Forces’ (Jammu and Kashmir) Special Powers Act, 1990, (d) Armed Forces’ (Punjab and Chandigarh) Special Powers Act, 1983, (e) Assam Preventive Detention Act 1980, (f) National Security Act, 1980 (as amended in 1984 and 1987), (g) Essential Services Maintenance Act, 1981, (h) Disturbed Areas Act, 1983, (i) Terrorist-Affected Areas (Special Courts) Act (TADA), 1984 U) National Security Guards’ Act, 1986, (k) Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act, 1987 and (I) Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA), 2002.
The impact of the aforementioned laws is that they clothe armed forces and security personnel with emergency powers without explicitly abrogating people’s fundamental rights under the Indian Constitution. A fundamental right, per se, cannot be usurped or altered. The POTA expired in October 2004. Its several provisions, granting arbitrary and repressive powers to armed forces and security personnel, were incorporated, verbatim, in the UAPA. The reincarnated provisions include: (a) Attaching evidentiary value to custodial confessions under duress, and electronic communication, including e-mails and telephonic calls. (b) Prosecuting anyone as a terrorist, if he talks in favour of any banned freedom fighting organisation.
The T ADA was used to quell Sikhs’ freedom movement and suppress political opponents and minorities for about 10 years. Over seventy thousand cases were registered on flimsy grounds against political opponents of Congress party. Only about one per cent of the cases were based on evidence, though scanty. The POTA was used, and its successor UAPA is being used, inter alia, to curb ‘insurgencies’ in Kashmir and India’s North-East.
The following instances amply reflect the POTA’s brutal application: (a) During their ‘counter-insurgency operations’ (1989 to 2008), Indian army and security forces are believed to have martyred over one lac people, and raped about 20,000 women. Countless children have been orphaned and houses destroyed. Innocent Kashmiris, aged between two to 80 years, were kept in illegal detention without prosecution for several years, (b) Over 3,000 proNaxalite tribals (adivasis), including a 14-year-old girl Mayant Rajkumari, ‘were incarcerated as terrorists in Jharkhand state. (c) Thousands of Gujerati Muslims were harassed, and hounded out of their homes in 2002. The state government clamped POTA on surviving Muslims to gag their protests. (d) People protesting dispossession of their land in Uttar Pradesh were arrested under arson and murder charges. A 10-year-old boy was dubbed a ‘dreaded terrorist’.
The Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, 1958 (as amended in 1972) is no less brutal than the POTA or UAPA. The Act gives no precise definition of ‘disturbed area’. The declaration of any area as ‘disturbed’ under Section 3 is the Act is the prerogative of the Governor of the State or the Central Government. The occupied state’s legislature has no jurisdiction in the matter, though under India’s Constitution, ‘public order’ is a state subject (Seventh Schedule, List II, Entry I) - Under Section 4(a) of the Act, even a non-commissioned officer can order his men to shoot to kill ‘if he is of the opinion that it is necessary to do so for maintenance of public order...’ This gives very wide discretion to even very junior officers.
Similarly, Section 4(b) allows such military personnel to destroy any shelter from which in his opinion, armed attacks ‘are likely to be made’ or which has been utilised as a hideout by absconders ‘wanted for any offence’. This latitude has permitted the destruction of large numbers of dwellings and other buildings in the State, including collateral damage when buildings adjoining the one targeted have been damaged or destroyed. The SOS (ibid.) states, since 1989, 1,05,447 houses and shops have been destroyed.
Section 4(c) of the Act permits arrest without warrant with whatever ‘force as may be necessary of any person against whom’ a reasonable suspicion exists that he is about to commit a cognizable offence. Section 4(d) authorises the entry and search, without warrant, of any premises to make arrests as sanctioned under Section 4(c), or to recover any person ‘believed to be wrongfully restrained or confined’, or any property ‘reasonably suspected’ to be stolen property or any arms, ammunition or explosive substance ‘believed to be unlawfully kept in such premises. For military personnel, operating in a culturally-alien terrain, ‘beliefs’ and ‘reasonable suspicions’ are often wholly unfounded leading to human rights abuses.
Section 6 exempts Army personnel from prosecution, stating No prosecution, suit or legal proceeding shall be instituted, except with the previous sanction of the Central Government, against any person in respect of anything done or purported to be done in exercise of powers conferred by this Act’. Interestingly, exemption from prosecution is not only for what is done under this Act, but also for what is ‘purported to be done’. The Act violates the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights to which India is a signatory. Article 2(3) directs the signatory state to ensure that any person whose rights have been violated ‘shall have an effective remedy, notwithstanding that the violation has been committed in an official capacity’.
While Article 4(1) permits State Parties to take measures derogating from their obligations in the time of national emergency. Article 4(3) lays down that any such derogation must be reported to other State Parties through the UN Secretary-General. The Indian government has never made such a communication in any case. An emergency per se must be a temporary measure. However the Act has been misused by the armed forces for decades in various parts of India. Furthermore, Article 4(2) stipulates that no derogation from certain key articles, including Article 6 (right to life) may be made under this provision. The Article
6(1) of the Covenant, inter alia, states that, ‘No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his life.’ Under international law, once India has signed this Covenant, its provisions can even supersede the Constitution. In other words, the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act is not legal. Continued misuse of draconian laws, and the exemption from prosecution to India’s military personnel is a major source of human rights violations by army formations in the ‘disturbed’ states. . This betrays an ignorance of international humanitarian law which applies to all combatants and militants.
The international legal instruments including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, Geneva Conventions, etc, which India has signed, apply to its forces as well. Obviously, they are guilty of state terrorism.

Strengthening Matriarchy
Shahid Iqbal Nagra

MUSLIM reformers in the nineteenth century struggled to introduce female education, to ease some of the restrictions on women’s activities, limiting polygamy, and ensuring women’s rights under Islamic law. Sir Syed Ahmad Khan founder of the Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College convened the Mohammedan Educational Conference in the 1870s to promote modern education for Muslims. Among the predominantly male participants were many of the earliest proponents of education and improved social status for women. They advocated cooking and sewing classes conducted in a religious framework to advance women’s knowledge and skills and to reinforce Islamic values. But progress in women’s literacy was slow. By 1921, only four out of every 1,000 Muslim females were literate. Promoting the education of women was a first step in moving beyond the constraints imposed by veil (purdah).
In 1937 the Muslim Personal Law restored rights such as inheritance of property that had been lost by women under the Anglicization of certain civil laws. Within a brief spell of ten years (1937-47), the unresponsive, homebound, purdah-clad Muslim women had been able to transform themselves radically into a pro-active, articulate, motivated and mobilized group conscious of their potentialities for political and social action.
The Pakistan movement in 1946-47 saw the biggest ever mobilization of educated, elite and energized Muslim women stepping out of their homes, proving their ability to organize, demonstrate, court arrest, face persecution, lathi-charges, teargas, and raising funds for relief work, in time of crises. They worked side by side with their men by raising sizeable funds during the Bengal famine (1943-44) the 1945-46 general elections and for the victims of the communal holocausts in Calcutta and Bihar (1946). They had also organized extensive relief work over there, as well as for the seven million refugees that had poured into West Pakistan during the partition riots in 1947.
Quaid-e-Azam inspired his own sister, Fatima Jinnah, and Begum Ra’ana Liaquat Ali Khan, to found several institutions and organizations for the educational uplift, economic amelioration and professional training of women in Pakistan’s formative years. Quaid-e-Azam also saw to it that women were represented in the Pakistan Constituent Assembly, included in delegations to the UN and other international moots, and in executive bodies of almost every organizational set up, after Pakistan’s birth. These courageous women fought a long and drawn out battle with the religious conservatives for their rights. All three constitutions promoted activism and brought about, complete equality and women rights.
Unfortunately, under Benazir and Nawaz women continued to be oppressed, abused and degraded. None possessed the courage no to even debate the issue of Hadood and other discriminatory laws, in public. Ironically during Benazir’s tenure reserved seats for women were allowed to lapse. It may be recalled that women reserved seats were included as affirmative action by her father Zulfikar Bhutto in the 1973 constitution which was unanimously adopted by all political parties. Strangely enough his daughter and the first Prime Minister of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan permitted these seats to lapse knowing fully well that revival through a constitutional amendment would be next to impossible. Subsequently, the PML-N government could not implement party manifesto which clearly pronounced that women seats would be restored. No thought was ever given to the matter leave, alone moving it in the parliament. However under President Musharraf, women’s reserved seats have been incorporated in the constitution and thereby secured in perpetuity. Thirty three per cent seats have been reserved for women in local councils, 20 per cent seats in the Provincial and National Assemblies besides 10 per cent quota for women in Central Superior Services. Un-Islamic social practices such as vani, swera and marriage to the Quran are prohibited and punishable; honour killings punishable by death or life imprisonment. Women are no longer a fig-leaf; they are now visible in large numbers in all walks of life. Women empowerment is an important topical subject worldwide. In evolving a better society women’s role is pivotal. No tool for development is more effective than empowerment of women. It has a multiple effect on the family, community and the whole nation. No meaningful national development can be achieved without their full participation. It is difficult to make any headway or execute any policy without placing women in the forefront and according to them their rightful place in nation building. When the vision of each woman is pooled with the vision of others, the group generates energy which serves to forge real change in their lives and in the lives of others around them. Equality in the role and status of women has been ensured and dealt with comprehensively within a framework of rights and privileges in an Islamic society. While it is recognized that the two sexes have a certain natural division of functions, equality of fundamental human rights has been enjoined. In fact Islam granted women equality of civil rights and economic independence before any creed or culture had dared to attempt it. This included the right to inherit and hold property, the freedom to contract marriage and the right to divorce. Lastly, the elevation of Dr Fehmida Mirza as the speaker of Pakistan’s National Assembly would surely prove to be a milestone in the process of empowerment of women which was initiated in 2002. Her election is important not only in that she is the first woman Speaker of Pakistan but also in the entire Islamic world.




A way out of this Olympic confrontation
Adrian Hamilton

I HAVE a suggestion for breaking out of the impasse over the issue of Tibet and the Olympics. It is for the West to make the Dalai Lama the arbiter of whether we should attend the opening ceremonies or not. He’s for the Olympic Games, after all, and says he wants them to be a success. It’s the treatment of his people he is challenging.
The confrontation over Tibet has emerged as one of the most astonishing, and certainly least expected, diplomatic developments of our time. Western leaders, it has to be said, have been taken as much by surprise as the Chinese. To Beijing, Tibet was a little local difficulty that might cause some huffing and puffing from the usual cast of Tibetan exiles and activist groups, but really had no connection to political issues. And that, it must be said, is broadly how Western governments looked on it. Of course, the pressure of publicity and activist groups made it impossible for leaders going to China not to say something about human rights. But it was becoming something of a formality.
The extraordinary thing about the Tibet protests is that they have short-circuited all the empty rhetoric on human rights and gone straight to the hard center where the issue catches China at its most oppressive and most obdurate. And it is an issue forced on the politicians from below. Darfur proved the first, and most surprising spark, when Steven Spielberg pulled out as artistic director of the Games citing China’s failure to constrain Sudan in Darfur. It caught Beijing genuinely puzzled. With a policy of noninterference in other countries’ affairs, it couldn’t see its responsibility for Darfur. Tibet is proving a different matter altogether, an internal affair of China’s in which the outside world, in Beijing’s eyes, had no right to poke their noses. Yet it is Tibet that has incensed the world outside and had crowds of protesters on the streets where the torch has been run.
In terms of human rights in China as a whole, granting Beijing the Olympic Games has not done much to help. Indeed you could argue that they have made matters worse as the security forces have arrested every dissenter in sight to make sure there is no trouble on the occasion. Over time, however, it is possible to see improvement as greater middle-class wealth and artistic freedom works its way into political expression. On Tibet, on the other hand, China won’t budge, while Western politicians cannot fail to press the case because their public and the media have made it a litmus test of an ethical foreign policy. Direct intervention has been killed by the experience of Iraq and the impossibility of doing it in most cases. But partly for that reason, the pressure on politicians to stand up for rights abroad in their diplomatic dealings has grown the stronger. It’s not a clash of civilizations but it is a straight conflict of view, on which the Chinese government has the support of nearly all (with some honorable exceptions amongst dissenters) of its population.—Arab News