On January 10th 2013, the New Year in Pakistan started with a gruesome bang of a continuing holocaust of sectarian cleansing in which Quetta witnessed 4 bomb blasts targeting Hazara Shias. The death toll of the day was 102 dead and hundreds injured. The day has been labeled as Black Thursday. Ali Dayan Hasan of Human Rights Watch stated “As Shia community members continue to be slaughtered in cold blood, the callousness and indifference of authorities offers a damning indictment of the state, its military and security agencies.”
Supporters of Hazara community gather near burning tyres as they are protesting against brewery road incident in Quetta on Sunday, April 15, 2012. (Arsalan Naseer/PPI Images/ Courtesy from the Dawn).
The Asian Human Rights Commission condemns and protests against the calculated Shia extermination taking place in Pakistan. In this decade alone, more than 1000 members of Hazara community, have mercilessly targeted and killed. The State of Pakistan damned by its Wehrmacht and the assortment of vassal militias i.e. Lashkar-e-Taiba, Jaish-e-Muhammad, Sunni Thehreek, Ahle Sunnat wal Jammaat, etc., all named and basing their purpose and goals of Islamic Sharia cannot escape the indictment of turning Pakistan into a Wahhabi state even if it means mass killings of Shias and minorities a reminder of Jew holocaust of 30s and 40s in Nazi Germany. AHRC is mindful of the fact that these organization though proponents of dissenting sects have never clashed on sectarian lines. Their targets have only been activists of Political Parties or Shias. Pakistan is today the battleground of the Saudi dynasty’s war against the Shias.
Despite the fact that Pakistan has had spates of democratic rule, but by and large the State has gradually been reduced to a theocratic authoritarian state. Democracy is as meaningless outside the Parliament as the Rule of Law remains dead outside the courtrooms. The Constitution has substantially been undermined to the extent of a document which ill affords to provide any surety of life and liberty to the citizens of Pakistan. The writ of the Government of Pakistan has been totally lost from the KPK Province to Baluchistan and in port city Karachi. The city sees death of some 20 to 25 on an average of its citizens every day. Section 154 Cr. P.C is no longer a provision of law which puts the investigative machinery of the Police in motion, but factually is only a memo by the name of FIR for recording the “offences” designing human lives into figures, and statistics. By the appalling conditions of Pakistan’s Criminal Justice System, it has in all areas of government become dysfunctional and a failed state, fast deteriorating into unfathomable anarchy, given the fire power the non-state actors have assembled, and a confused Wehrmacht, which is shown the desecrated bodies of its Officers and Soldiers, on a routine basis and yet refuses to accept that Taliban will now rule Pakistan, and no longer be its strategic asset. Its Officers do not even have the courage to condemn these horrific acts. Dissentions on the stated policy on Taliban within the military establishment cannot be ruled out. The banning of YouTube raises serious suspicions on the reasons for cutting it off from Pakistani viewers. The videos of inhuman slaughtering of Pakistani soldiers are easily available to viewers. The refusal by the Federal Government, the Government of Sindh and that of Government of Baluchistan to call in Army in aid of Civil Power shows the weakness of the democratic system of Pakistan.
The role of the Supreme Court in the deteriorating law and order also is a cause of alarm. To date the judiciary has acquitted more than 900 militants. The judiciary’s pliant sympathy for Lal Masjid and other extremist organizations is a matter of public record. Its assumed authority of “supremacy” cuts through all concepts and ideas yet advanced in all legal systems. The intrusion of judiciary in the Executive arm and the Parliament has further confused the Politics of Pakistan. Since its restoration the judiciary has done little to uphold the rights of the citizens of Pakistan, except for using Article 184 clause 3 of the Constitution of Pakistan to settle Political Issues, it has never addressed the real problems of security of the people of Pakistan. All “suo moto” actions taken up by it including those of Karachi and Baluchistan have not shown any positive results except gaining political popularity at the cost of justice
Elections are soon due in Pakistan but with rapidly growing anarchic conditions. The present governments will be ending their terms on 16th March 2013, a democratic process transitioning to new elections completing its 5 year term for the first time augers well, but may meet it untimely death again at the hands of bloodbath, such blood soaked elections will either strengthen democracy in Pakistan, hopefully put the law and order situation as the first priority of the new government or the military mullah alliance will finally put in place the sacred face of neo-Taliban’s using the very democratic process the religio-political forces publicly denounce; sealing the fate of Pakistan. If the latter situation develops it will not be fault of compromising politicians alone, but the military junta and the judiciary of Pakistan which uses the western concept of rule to encourage talibanization forced conversion of minorities to Islam, and has shunned any move to provide any sense of security to the women of Pakistan. The victims of this political nightmare will not only be the people of Pakistan, but the International Community, specially the neighboring countries. It’s time the International Community takes up these issues with the Government of Pakistan, before the elections. A rogue state armed to the teeth with weapons of mass destruction, is too dangerous to be left alone experimenting with democracy, without a mature leadership which is willing to take the ownership if its citizens. AHRC demands from the Government of Pakistan to adhere to its commitment to United Nations Human Rights Declaration; as responsible member of the United Nations take immediate steps to stop the sectarian cleansing of Shia Community and provide security to its citizens which it is bound to, under Article 9 of the Constitution of Pakistan.
# # #
About AHRC: The Asian Human Rights Commission is a regional non-governmental organisation that monitors human rights in Asia, documents violations and advocates for justice and institutional reform to ensure the protection and promotion of these rights. The Hong Kong-based group was founded in 1984.
