Shazia Nizamani Published June 13, 2022
IT is no secret that oppressed and vulnerable communities in Pakistan are routinely targeted. Religious minorities, women, students, children, transpersons, and people of certain ethnicities periodically find themselves at the mercy of forces out to ‘homogenise’ society. Intolerance against women and others is growing steadily.
Unfortunately, most cases of human rights violations go unnoticed. Very few attract the attention of media and rights activists — with the electronic and print media often focusing on certain incidents, whereas others of a similar nature are not highlighted. The crimes against these people never garner [receice] public attention or attract the notice of the higher authorities. Those that are reported go on to become the focus of the law enforcers, the judiciary and human rights NGOs. State-mandated commissions are set up to investigate such instances, and as a result, progress on resolving these cases is accelerated.
A closer look reveals a pattern. There seems to be an unspoken, unwritten protocol of selectivity — often in sync with the political views of owners of news channels or newspapers and magazines. In more general terms, the importance of a case can rest on factors such as ethnicity, urban versus rural issues, the social and political status of the victim or perpetrator. These often determine the media’s handling of such situations.
For instance, the harassment of a couple by the accused Usman Mirza, who ran a car business, received huge attention on social media, but the case of Dodo Bheel, a worker in a private company who died after being subjected to intense torture for several days reportedly by the company’s guards over alleged theft in Tharparkar district, did not.
Why did his case not attract the attention of most media outlets and human rights organisations? Is it because he belonged to a low-caste Hindu minority community or because the perpetrators worked in a corporate company and did not belong to any political or high social class? Noor Mukadam’s heinous murder was rightly highlighted by the media, resulting in speedy justice. But what about Quratul Ain Baloch, the mother of four children who was allegedly murdered by an abusive spouse? Her case was hardly taken up by the media or human rights activists. Faryal, a 35-year-old mother of three, was stabbed to death allegedly by her husband in their house in Karachi. But there was very little public reaction, media coverage, or concern shown by rights activists’ when compared to, say, the Nazim Jokhio case.
Forced conversion is a very serious matter and mostly involves lower-caste, non-Muslim, minor girls. Pooja Kumari, a low-caste Hindu teenage girl, was killed after she apparently resisted her abduction linked to alleged forced conversion for marriage. According to an HRCP report, nearly 1,000 girls belonging to minority Hindu and Christian communities are forcibly married or converted to Islam every year in Pakistan. It is an issue of grave concern, yet there is no sustained campaign by rights NGOs or government authorities to end forcible conversions.
Baloch students have routinely complained of harassment and racial profiling at campuses in Punjab, both by university administrations and other students groups. The challenges these students face never make it to the agenda of activists or to the mainstream media. There has been criminal silence on violence against transpeople. Over the years, scores of such persons have been killed in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
Ethnic Shia Hazaras and Ahmedis have long been persecuted for their faiths. According to a report by the National Commission for Human Rights (NCHR), 509 Hazaras have been killed in various incidents of terrorism in Quetta over the past five years.
The NCHR was created to protect and promote fundamental human rights guaranteed in the 1973 Constitution. The Sindh Commission on the Status of Women maintains an office and staff and conducts periodic meetings, generating glossy reports with the help of consultants and INGO funding. Likewise, the Sindh Human Rights Commission also has an office and staff and is mandated to take up all human rights violations that take place in the province.
Civil society needs to evaluate the performance of these commissions, and monitor the implementation of their mandates and sanctioned funds received from the government and INGOs. The Sindh Commission on the Status of Women, the NCHR and the Sindh Human Rights Commission should enhance their coordination with each other, avoid the duplication of efforts and proactively and efficiently execute their responsibilities which have been enshrined in their mandate and take up cases of human rights violations without coming under any pressure or compromise.
The writer is a lawyer.
Published in Dawn, June 13th, 2022
Huma Yusuf Published June 13, 2022
REALPOLITIK trumps ideology. That’s the main lesson from the thawing relations between the Afghan Taliban and India. Pakistan must carefully track these evolving ties to calibrate not only its foreign policy, but also its sense of its own global standing.
A recent visit by representatives from India’s external affairs ministry ostensibly focused on humanitarian aid delivery, but inevitably touched on regional security matters, specifically counterterrorism. Senior Taliban government officials engaged with the Indian delegation and provided assurances they would prevent the use of Afghan soil against India by groups such as the Lashkar-e-Taiba, Jaish-e-Mohammad, and Hizbul Mujahideen.
This is not the first engagement between the Afghan Taliban and India. New Delhi had backchannel links to the Taliban prior to the group’s takeover of Afghanistan, and Indian officials met Taliban representatives in Doha just weeks after the Taliban captured Kabul. India has long recognised that Afghanistan is critical to its security and regional stability, and that blunt opposition to the Taliban regime — or even an ongoing isolationist approach — would not be possible.
That realisation was heightened in recent days following militant threats to India by militant groups after BJP leaders made derogatory remarks about the Holy Prophet (PBUH).
For India, an isolationist approach to the Afghan Taliban isn’t possible.
The overtures from New Delhi (which predate the threats) confirm that a cornered Taliban regime will prioritise humanitarian assistance and international relations — and the distant hope of formal recognition — over any outmoded sense of fealty to the Pakistani establishment.
For the Taliban, ties with India offer leverage over Pakistan (much in the same way that its ability to curtail or prop up the Pakistani Taliban does). By courting others, the Afghan Taliban can ensure that they are not overly reliant on Islamabad in terms of diplomatic and economic support.
There is an ongoing debate about whether this reflects Pakistan’s declining global standing, or the growing political savvy of the Afghan Taliban who realise that a relationship of bilateral patronage is less useful than it may have been in the 1990s in an era of multipolarity.
What is clear though is that Pakistan must develop its own foreign policy in light of these realities. The key aspect that deserves recognition — beyond security circles, where it is known, and primarily among the public — is that the Taliban will always act in its own interests.
Second is the reminder of India’s regional influence, backed up by its relative economic might. It has won access to the Afghan Taliban through humanitarian assistance, but it will retain it through trade deals, and potentially support for the Taliban to access international financial markets.
Pakistan should also carefully watch what such developments mean about the divides within the Taliban, and the resulting security implications for it. Dissent within Taliban ranks is widely known, with internationalists and purists pitted against each other, oscillating between concessions to the international community (the dangling carrot of resuming girls’ secondary education) and concessions to hardliners (mandatory veiling requirements for women).
No doubt, some of the Taliban rank and file will object to softening ties with the Indian government, particularly in its current BJP-dominated, anti-Muslim incarnation. These divisions may result in growing support by dissenters within the Taliban for groups such as LeT, but also the Pakistani Taliban, which would make Pakistan’s domestic security situation difficult.
Those who fear that the success of the Taliban in Afghanistan will embolden religious political and violent extremist groups can now point to the Taliban’s engagement with India to show that the Taliban’s ideological purity has quickly become subservient to pragmatic politics
Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid denounced the anti-Muslim wing of the BJP as ‘fanatics’ after the party’s then spokesperson Nupur Sharma made her offensive comments. But this has yet to reflect the Taliban’s diminishing appetite to engage with New Delhi.
The final reminder, as always, is that Pakistan’s foreign policy stewards should stay agile with respect to developing relations between Afghanistan and India. As eloquently noted by the International Crisis Group’s Graeme Smith, the Taliban leadership is confused, daunted by the task of running a national government, and torn between “the past and future … look[ing] back to a version of their previous regime … look[ing] forward to something new”. It is too soon to tell which way it will go, but whatever the outcome, Islamabad should be ready.
The writer is a political and integrity risk analyst. Twitter:@humayusuf
Published in Dawn, June 13th, 2022
Maleeha Lodhi Published June 13, 2022
VOTING by expatriate [ملک سے باہر رہنے والے] Pakistanis has been a hot topic of discussion in parliament, judiciary and the media. There is no disagreement on voting by our diaspora [ایک قوم کے افراد جو دنیا بھر میں بکھرے ہوں]. Their right to vote is provided by law. Although the recent amendment of the election law was returned by the president to parliament for review, overseas Pakistanis’ right to vote was never in question.
A joint parliamentary session subsequently adopted the amendment bill. Earlier, while hearing a petition challenging this, the chief justice of the Islamabad High Court said amendments to the 2017 Election Act did not deprive expat Pakistanis of the vote. The petition was withdrawn.
The key questions in this regard are who is eligible to vote, how should the ballot be cast and what should be the time frame for implementation. A well-researched article published in Dawn’s magazine of Feb 27 examines the likely political impact of overseas voting and reaches the striking conclusion that it would be a “game changer” that could even determine the outcome of general elections.
Over 120 countries and territories today allow what is called external voting. But there are vast differences in the way this is implemented, how votes are cast and criteria for those entitled to vote, including length of stay away from their country of origin. Some countries use citizens’ intent to return to their home country as eligibility for them to vote.
Read more: Overseas voting
Few countries, however, have introduced electronic means for external voting. In South Asia, India allows NRIs to vote but only those who retain the country’s passport, are not citizens of another country, and physically present on polling day in their respective constituency. Registration of overseas Indians remains low and only 25,000 are estimated to have travelled back to vote in the last general election. Remote voting by postal ballot is now under consideration. Bangladesh and Nepal are still working on arrangements for voting by their diasporas. Sri Lankan expats abroad don’t have voting rights yet.
The Election Commission of Pakistan was charged by the 2017 Act with enabling overseas Pakistanis to vote. Those entitled to vote are holders of a NICOP card (national identity card for overseas Pakistanis) even if they are dual nationals. Some argue that voting rights should be confined to those who haven’t acquired citizenship of other countries, (several states do this), because they have sworn allegiance to another country and may have ‘divided loyalties’. They also do not have to face the consequences of their vote. But the issue here seems to be settled.
There are 8.6 million NICOP holders on the electoral rolls (as of June 2021). According to the ECP, 6.7m are in the Gulf/ Middle East, just under a million in UK and Europe, about 290,000 in the US, 180,000 in Canada and 401,870 in other countries. Of these 5m are on Punjab’s voter lists; 2.2m in KP; 1m in Sindh; 142,325 in Balochistan and 97,744 in Islamabad.
The ECP was enjoined [کام ذمے لگایا گیا] by the 2017 law to conduct pilot projects in by-elections to “ascertain the efficacy [افادیت], secrecy, security and financial feasibility” of such voting. Assisted by NADRA, it did that in 2018 for 35 national and provincial constituencies, which had 631,909 overseas voters. Being the first exercise of its kind only 7,461 expats registered online and just 6,233 voted via the internet. This suggests political parties didn’t show much interest at that time.
Read: Expats’ votes in LG polls: Implementing i-voting to take a year, Nadra tells court
In its report of this experience ECP’s Internet Voting Task Force identified several flaws and challenges that needed to be addressed before the system could become operational for general elections. It recommended a gradual approach starting with elections to non-political bodies and then local polls and by-elections, to enable people to understand the system and allow administrators to test, review and improve it. Significantly it noted that “some of the world’s most technologically advanced countries have either rolled back online voting or have deliberately chosen not to deploy it.”
While the ECP, which has done impressive work, is exploring an appropriate mechanism for external voting, the case for and against online voting by overseas Pakistanis is worth considering. Among its oft-cited advantages are that it offers easy accessibility to a dispersed diaspora, makes for faster counting, simplifies vote management and saves both time and money. Technology however is a double-edged sword. The argument against internet voting is that it is inconsistent with core principles of voting — secrecy and security. Nor does it fully comply with requirements for election integrity. Secrecy of the ballot and voter anonymity are fundamental principles in democracies which internet voting doesn’t meet. The voter verification process too has loopholes.
Election security is a worldwide concern and raises vexed questions about the threat of cyberattacks and data breaches including by hostile states and hackers. This can even compromise national security giving foreign powers’ ingress [مداخلت] into elections. Clone or fake sites can mislead voters and create chaos. How would the uninitiated in an unregulated digital space avoid such minefields?
As the majority of overseas Pakistani voters reside in the Gulf and mostly comprise labour it raises the question of whether they would be familiar with the internet to work this system. If they are unable to, the voting method will lack inclusiveness and disenfranchise[ووٹ کے حق سے محروم کرنا] a large number of expats. It would risk others casting the vote for them, which could open it to manipulation and undermine the election’s integrity. All these problems have to be solved if this mode is adopted. Voters both at home and abroad need to have trust and confidence in the system. Without that it will always be subject to controversy. Already Pakistan has an unedifying [ناخوشگوار] history of disputed elections and losing parties refusing to accept results.
This calls for careful evaluation and a step-by-step approach in which the ECP determines and then recommends the most secure and effective voting method and timeline for implementation, ensuring no group of expats is disenfranchised. It is examining various voting mechanisms — postal, internet, electronic, embassy in-person. It will have to run pilot tests to ascertain which one is feasible. But it will be up to parliament to approve what the ECP recommends. Political consensus will be essential for the legitimacy of any system.
The writer is a former ambassador to the US, UK & UN.
Published in Dawn, June 13th, 2022
|