Adil Najam
This is a shocking picture.
I too was shocked to see it right on the top half of the front page of Dawn (29 December, 2006). I was even more shocked to read the details of this incident that took place in Rawalpindi:
Police broke up a protest demonstration organised by family members and relatives of missing persons, badly beating and arresting several of them after they tried to march to the GHQ to present a memorandum to the Vice-Chief of the Army Staff. More than a hundred people, mostly women and children belonging to the families of the disappeared, arrived in groups to the square in front of the Flashman’s Hotel. According to the organisers of the protest, the participants had planned to peacefully march to the GHQ to register their concern over the detention of their loved-ones, who they say, have been in the custody of the army and secret agencies for the last several years.
Eyewitnesses said the trouble began when a heavy contingent of police, led by SP Yasin Farooq, SP Muhammad Azam and DSP Rana Shahid, pushed some of the protesters inside the hotel’s boundary wall, shoving and manhandling them badly. After some time more protesters arrived and started shouting slogans against the police. Those who had been detained inside the hotel also came out to join them. This led to skirmishes between police and the protesters. According to the eyewitnesses, the protest took a turn for the worse when the police stripped a young man, Mohammad bin Masood, the son of missing Masood Janjua. The witnesses said even then the police continued to drag him, finally throwing him into a police van.
The incident enraged other protesters, especially the man’s young sister, who started crying and flagellating herself. The police also shoved aside the father of a missing man and later arrested him. After having failed to march to the GHQ, the protesters blocked the Mall Road for about three hours. Police and protesters fought running battles for some time. Scared by police highhandedness and arrests, a young girl and a small child lost consciousness and fell on the road, the eyewitnesses said.
Unbowed and determined, the protesters refused to leave the place, end the protest and open the road until the arrested men were released. Later, on an assurance from SP Azam that the detained men would be released, the protesters dispersed peacefully. However, the younger brother of detained Mohammad bin Masood told Dawn by telephone that his brother had not been released by the police. The eyewitnesses said that besides an old man and Mohammad bin Masood, several women had been detained and not released till late in the evening.
The report of the incident in The News, adds the following:
Placard-holding women and children held a demonstration close to Flashmans Hotel here. But the police force stopped the procession going beyond Flashmans Hotel. “We planned a ‘freedom walk’ and wanted to hand over a letter to the vice chief of army staff in the General Headquarters (GHQ),� said Amina Masood, whose husband Masood Ahmed Janjua has been missing since July 30, 2005. Masood is among at least 105 persons missing from all over the country during the last five to six years. The SSPs, SHOs and dozens of constables from various police stations of Rawalpindi were deployed at the roadsides and tried their best to disperse the procession that lasted nearly two hours.
A handful of policewomen were also present at the rally and helped their male colleagues once the protesting women tried to walk towards the GHQ. “Do we belong to the same country,� questioned one aggrieved woman from an SHO when she was stopped. “Do we have arms in our hand? Why are you stopping us?� she shouted. The women shouted slogans and demanded the release of their males before Eid-ul-Azha. Some of the women and their children were even crying. In an unfortunate incident that could easily have been avoided by the security personnel a young man, Mohammad bin Masood, son of Masood Ahmed, was dragged into a police van and forcibly driven away from the scene.
The shame here is not on the young man without his shalwar. It is on the police for allowing this to happen. And in some ways it is all our shame.
My first reaction on seeing the picture was that maybe the young man’s shalwar fell off in the scuffle. The News story calls it “unfortunate incident that could easily have been avoided”; Dawn, however, suggests that he was “stripped.” In either case, the indignity inflicted on the young man is reprehensible. Even more reprehensible is that 105 individuals are ‘missing’ without their families having any news of them.
Here at ATP we try to be as fair and even-handed as possible. We have praised the police in a number of posts when it has done well (here and here). We try to highlight what is blatantly wrong (here and here) when we see it. Silly attempts to spread lies is one thing; disappearances are quite another. They do not do anyone any good and cause irreparable harm to the reputation of the country, and to all of us. To those who worry about Pakistan’s image internationally, we have asked before, and we ask again: Who is giving Pakistan a bad name?
But this is not about ‘image.’ This is about the reality of disappearances. If these people have committed crimes, then let them be charged and presented in courts. And if they are not, then the guilt and the crime is not theirs, but of whoever holds them.
Right Daktar, not only our opinions but also the priniciples differ. All I am saying is if you want to have democracy, have it all the way – anything half-assed will not be very useful or beneficial. Also to impose democracy without substance and legal framework and proper representation is nothing but a joke.
These issues and problems need to be fixed by all means before a true democracy can be established. Just to have “fair” elections among aristocrats and form a civilian government does not qualify it as a democracy.
And to tow this democracy line on false pretenses and lack of infrastructure legally and otherwise will not achieve it. Its like asking a bunch of pseudo and non-skilled engineers to build some fabulous machine without understanding the physics and mechanics behind it – it will never happen or will be seriously flawed. Better approach would be to train and educate these guys and then provide them the opportunity to build this machine. That way they will save time in the long run and would have produced a machine based on solid science whose future scalability and improvements will be dependent upon its strong foundation – the one that doesn’t crumble everytime you build something on top of it over and over again.
The only key and tricky part is who trains, how, and for how long? So obviously there has to be a transition and some statesman who will supervise this transitional period till the maturity for such a system is achieved. The nation has to trust this person and get behind him with checks and balances to achieve such goals – Otherwise the future outlook will be nothing but hopelessness… repeating the same errors and not learning about what went wrong. There are no short-cuts – but a thoughtful future planning. If a change is proposed, it better be a better and proven one and not the one that reverts back to the failed experiments of past.
PS: For issues such as this, you can either condemn them or do something about it. It all depends on how you see things and how personal principles and opinions dictate it.
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Also will be keeping a running total of condemnations from your types once the democracy [read: aristocracy] “returns” [read: farse] to Pakistan. Tell me your democracy is so decent to honour Supreme Court of Pakistan
Supreme Court Attack
I wonder what you would have said or done if this happened on Musharraf’s watch.[/quote]
Since you ask. I would say exactly what I felt when the Supreme Court storming happened. It was one of the saddest days for Pakistan. It was a deplorable and shameful act. Even more shameful than the attack was how the Sharif government tried to manipulate the court before this attack. By the way, Musharraf manipulated it in exactly the same way (seeking new oaths and changing judges) once he came in.
Let me anticipate your next question, I think the ordering of diverting the plane with Musharraf by Nawaz Sharif was not only deplorable it was a criminal act. It has always escaped me why he was not brought to justice for that? Who is Musharraf to forgive him on behalf of all the other passengers whose life were put in jeapordy?
Niether of the above takes away from or is a justification for the unconstitutional act of imposing Martial Law (I am sorry, calling it by another name does not make one hoot of a difference). That was a personal power grab and every indication is that Musharraf would have done that anyhow, only later (if not, then he should have left by now, now that his ‘job’ is done).
But you know what, this is not about Musharraf. There are things he has done that are good things (read my comments on other posts here). The corruption of Benazir’s goevrnemnt matches the institutional machinations of Nawaz Sharif and the arrogance of the Musharraf regime. But the point is that there are some whose allegiences lie with people (certain people can do no wrong, or they can only do wrong). There are others amongst us who assess things on principle. I guess, that is really where our true difference of opinion lies.
Baber, I mentioned Sardars as one of the problem not all of the problem. Can you address the other problems please? Don’t be selective in your response and use Sardars as an escape goat to end your rant.
“Musharraf claims to have the support of 72 out of 75 Baloch Sardarsâ€
COAS President = Dictator. There is no Martial Law but he COAS is running the country, he calls the shots.
So we can’t have democracy because we have few sardars?. I am from Balochistan I know that Makkaran Gawadar, Panjgur, bigger cities of Balochistan, where there are no Sardars plus no gas and electrcity in most parts. Most of the sardars you talking about are pro establishment like Jamali, Jam Yousuf and Yaar Mohammed Rind. Sardars control small areas and less then 3 million out of 9 million approx population live under the sardari system. So don’t blame everything on sardars. I am not a supporter of sardars but I have heared enough about “sardars blame game” and making them the scape goat for democracy.
Anyway, I found this on the internet for supporters of Musharraf:
“Musharraf claims to have the support of 72 out of 75 Baloch Sardars” (Dawn)
Link for above comment seems to be broken. here it is again:
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So untill we qualify democracy we should have dictatorship?
Isn’t the corrupt democracy a result of years of martial law or this kind of democracy always brought by dictators.[/quote]
Is it? Its funny that you call Musharraf’s Govt dictatorship? You all agree that there is no martial law right now – correct? What would you call Zia’s regime? Nazis?
How can you achieve “democracy” when the environment is not right? If it takes an honest and sincere “dictatorship” to create the environment, then let be it.
Civilians obviously dont have the discipline nor the balls to counter Sardars and their peasants and many other important issues – they are part of the problem. How do you explain that when the Sardars are part of the problem and sitting in the government? You seriously think their peasants can vote for Sardar other than theirs? Wouldn’t that be rigging, or aristocratic, or cheating?
Also they have known to have problems with country’s defense department. Rather than working together, they create rifts, promote generals for political gains, and politicize army – their own created monster that comes back and bites them on their asses…
A statesman who understands all this whether army or civilian needs get these out of the way, work towards creating positive and workable political environment and then get out of the way when its time. We are not there yet rather in the middle of this process…