The Taliban and other religious extremists in Pakistan increased their deadly attacks against civilians and public spaces during 2010, while the Pakistani government response was marred by serious human rights violations, Human Rights Watch maintained in its World Report 2011.

The 649-page report, Human Rights Watch’s 21st annual review of human rights practices around the globe, summarizes major human rights trends in more than 90 states and territories worldwide. Suicide bombings, armed attacks, and killings by the Taliban, al Qaeda, and their affiliates targeted nearly every sector of Pakistani society, including religious minorities and journalists, resulting in hundreds of deaths. The country’s largest cities bore the brunt of these attacks. Two attacks in late May 2010 against the Ahmadiyya religious community in Lahore killed nearly 100 people. On July 1, a suicide bombing at Data Darbar, shrine of the patron saint of Lahore, killed 40 people. Militant attacks targeting civilians in conflict areas amounted to war crimes.

“Taliban atrocities aren’t happening in a vacuum, but instead often with covert support from elements in the intelligence services and law enforcement agencies,” said Ali Dayan Hasan, senior South Asia researcher at Human Rights Watch. “The Pakistan government needs to use all lawful means to hold those responsible to account.”

The government’s response to militant attacks instead has routinely violated basic rights, Human Rights Watch said. Thousands of Taliban suspects have been held in unlawful military detention without charge, many of them in two military facilities in Swat, one in the Khyber agency of the tribal areas, and at least one more in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province.

While the US remained Pakistan’s most significant ally and was the largest donor to Pakistan’s flood relief effort, Human Rights Watch documented several instances in 2010 in which US aid to Pakistan appeared to contravene the US Leahy Law. The law requires the US State Department to certify that no military unit receiving US aid is involved in gross human rights abuses and, when such abuses are found, to investigate them thoroughly and properly. In October the US imposed sanctions on six units of the Pakistani military operating in the Swat valley, but at the same time announced a US$2 billion military aid package for Pakistan to help the country meet unprecedented counter-terrorism challenges.

“The Leahy sanctions have not ended continuing reports of summary executions by Pakistani security forces,” Hasan said. “Killings by the army need to end, and the US should stop sending mixed signals that allow the army to continue with business as usual.”

Persecution and discrimination under cover of law against religious minorities and other vulnerable groups remained serious problems, Human Rights Watch said. On November 7, Aasia Bibi, a Christian from Punjab province, became the first woman in the country’s history to be sentenced to death for the crime of blasphemy. Attempts by government officials and legislators to seek a pardon and amend the abusive and discriminatory blasphemy law were greeted with threats, intimidation, and violence. On December 30, the government backtracked on its promise to review the blasphemy law.

On January 4, 2011, Salman Taseer, the Punjab governor, a vocal critic of the blasphemy law, was gunned down in Islamabad by a bodyguard who admitted to the killing, saying he did it because of Taseer’s stance on the issue. Taseer had received numerous death threats for his support of Aasia Bibi. A former information minister, Sherry Rehman, who proposed amendments to the blasphemy law, also has received public death threats in the face of state inaction.

“Instead of capitulating to extremists who intimidate, threaten, and kill those with opposing views, the state should protect those at risk, such as Rehman, and hold those inciting violence accountable,” Hasan said.

Aerial drone strikes by the United States on suspected al Qaeda and Taliban members near Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan escalated in 2010. These strikes were accompanied by persistent claims of large numbers of civilian casualties, but lack of access to the conflict areas has prevented independent verification.

Pakistan’s media remained vocal critics of the government and experienced less interference from the elected government than in previous years. However, fearful of retaliation, the media rarely reported on human rights abuses by the military in counterterrorism operations, Human Rights Watch said.

Pakistan’s independent judiciary repeatedly caused controversy by overstepping its constitutional authority and relying on overly broad “contempt” laws to muzzle criticism of judicial conduct, Human Rights Watch said. Journalists told Human Rights Watch that major television channels were informally advised by judicial authorities that they would be summoned to face contempt charges for criticizing or commenting unfavorably on judicial decisions or specific judges. Publications, including the English-language newspapers Dawn and the News, were compelled to apologize publicly to the courts. Journalists at Dawn faced contempt proceedings for publishing a story alleging misuse of office by the chief justice of the Sindh High Court.

“No government institution, including the courts, should be immune from public debate in a democratic society,” Hasan said. “Judicial independence does not mean that judicial decisions‚ or even judges themselves‚ should not be subject to public criticism.”

Relations between the judiciary and some of its erstwhile allies in the “Lawyer’s Movement,” which helped restore Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry to office in 2009, deteriorated markedly during the year. In October, lawyers physically tried to attack the chief justice of the Lahore High Court in his chambers. The following day, provincial police who had been allowed into the court premises by the Lahore chief justice beat and arrested some 100 lawyers and charged them under Pakistan’s Anti-Terrorism Act.

In April, the Supreme Court controversially agreed to consider challenges to the unanimously enacted 18th Amendment to the Constitution, limiting presidential power and giving parliament, the prime minister, the judiciary, and provincial governments greater autonomy. Politicians and civil society groups had hailed the amendment as an important step in restoring Pakistan’s parliamentary system of democracy. The court heard several challenges to the amendment, including to the mechanism for judicial appointments, the renaming of the North West Frontier Province as Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and provisions preventing defections from political parties.

In December, acting on a Supreme Court interim order, parliament passed the 19th Amendment to assuage the court’s concerns on the procedure for judicial appointments. However, the remaining challenges are pending and the court has not ruled on them. On August 16‚ the Supreme Court appeared to usurp legislative power when it stated that Parliament has limited powers to amend the Constitution with reference to Islam. Provisions related to Islam were inserted into the Constitution in 1986 by a parliament seated after rigged elections, under pressure from the military dictator Gen. Zia ul-Haq.

In November, the Lahore High Court unconstitutionally prevented President Asif Ali Zardari from pardoning Aasia Bibi, the blasphemy law victim. The court also voluntarily accepted for hearing a frivolous petition seeking Rehman’s disqualification from parliamentary office on the grounds that she had committed “apostasy” by trying to offer amendments to the blasphemy law.

“It is the right of any member of parliament to propose legislation,” Hasan said. “For the Lahore High Court to entertain such malicious litigation amounts to legal persecution.”

On December 23, the Federal Shariat Court ruled unconstitutional several key provisions of the 2006 Women’s Protection Act, which had sought to nullify the most abusive provisions of the abusive Hudood Ordinance, another relic of the Zia ul-Haq era. The verdict withdraws the relief provided by the Women’s Protection Act and undermines protections provided in accordance with the fundamental rights provisions of Pakistan’s constitution.

“It is sad that Pakistan’s judicial system is using its newfound independence to undermine parliament and restore discrimination and abuse rather than to end it,” Hasan said.

Source: Human Rights Watch

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