IN yet another display of vigilante justice that has, unfortunately, become a regular feature of national life, a highly charged mob attacked a police station in the federal capital on Monday. Armed with batons and iron rods, the angry crowd surrounded the Golra police station and broke into the premises, damaging the offices of the moharrir, investigation officers and the station house officer. The law-enforcement officials tried to protect themselves by locking themselves up but had to seek help from another police contingent that included personnel of the anti-terrorist squad, the anti-riot unit and the counterterrorism department. It took a heavy police contingent an hour of tear-gas shelling and baton-charge before the charged crowd could be dispersed. The protesters wanted the custody of a suspect who was under investigation for a blasphemy-related complaint. Increasingly, there is a tendency to ignore the fact that the fora to probe any offence are the law enforcers and the courts, and not a violent mob. What incidents such as these show is a deep distrust of the judicial system. Even if someone is under investigation and in police custody, the vigilantes want to administer their own barbaric form of ‘justice’.
It is unfortunate that no action has been taken to curb such behaviour and thinking — the consequences of not addressing the regressive ways of society. Mob justice is not limited to cases of alleged blasphemy. Mobs have beaten an alleged teen robber to death in Karachi (2019) and lynched two brothers in Sialkot under the very nose of police officials (2010), and ransacked a traffic police picket in Rawalpindi (2017). Not only do these incidents expose the weakness of the state and its inability to impose its writ and win the confidence of the public through good governance, they also expose the failings of our weak judicial system that often tends to favour the rich and powerful rather than protect the vulnerable. The country needs fair and transparent rule of law, and it needs it urgently.
The threat within
ESTRANGED PTI leader Jehangir Khan Tareen wants his pound of flesh. Even though Mr Tareen insists that he and his group remain a part of the PTI, his decision to nominate ‘parliamentary leaders’ from among the legislators supporting him in the National Assembly and the Punjab Assembly shows that he is prepared to go to any lengths to force the hand of his once close friend Prime Minister Imran Khan.
With some 30 MPs and almost 10 MNAs standing ‘firmly’ with him, he has the magical numbers to turn the tables on his leader both at the centre and in the largest province if the government does not stop the FIA from investigating him and his son on multiple charges of money laundering, fraud and corruption. Mr Khan appears to have already caved in to the pressure. The speed of the probe has slowed down with the formation of a one-man commission to look into allegations of injustice against Mr Tareen at the behest of some powerful aides to the prime minister.
Call it a split or not, the formation of the PTI forward bloc at the centre and in Punjab has exposed the weak foundations of the party and the government. This should send alarm bells ringing in the ruling party since Mr Tareen’s actions are clearly meant to send a strong message to both the prime minister and the beleaguered Punjab Chief Minister Usman Buzdar to desist from hurting Mr Tareen’s business interests or acting against his supporters in parliament. It is also a clever way of showing that he enjoys enough clout within the party to disrupt the PTI’s apple cart if pushed to the wall further. How far Mr Khan can or will go to accommodate him to avert this danger to his frail government remains to be seen. The pause in the inquiry has already damaged the credibility of the prime minister’s claims of across-the-board accountability.
Meanwhile, Mr Tareen’s repeated show of power at his dinners for ‘dissident’ PTI parliamentarians and during his court appearances indicate that he will leave no stone unturned to extort concessions from his old friend. Whether the pro-Tareen parliamentarians will remain a pressure group or move further to forge a deal with the opposition to bring about a change at the centre or in Punjab depends on the extent to which Mr Khan chooses to accommodate them. His party’s former secretary general has cleverly pushed the ball back in Mr Khan’s court.
Should the Tareen group succeed in forcing him to accepting its demand, it could lead to the activation of other dormant pressure groups within the PTI, which would further compromise Mr Khan’s control over the party and his ability to govern effectively. Mr Khan may have skirted the threat to his rule from the divided opposition. But will he survive the threat from within his party?
Guantánamo release?
GUANTÁNAMO Bay, the American gulag in Cuba, is one of the more egregious examples of how democracies can bend and break the rules when it suits them. The detention camp entered the popular global lexicon in the aftermath of the 9/11 events, when the US started holding terror suspects in the facility. However, over the years the penitentiary developed a reputation for notoriety, particularly when it came to the abuse of prisoners’ rights and the flouting of due process. Amongst Guantánamo’s prisoners is Saifullah Paracha, a septuagenarian Pakistani businessman who has been held in the gulag for over 16 years. While the Americans claim he was an Al Qaeda ‘facilitator’, Mr Paracha denies the charge. It is important to note he has never been charged with a crime, while he claims he was abducted in Bangkok and tortured at Bagram, Afghanistan. Saifullah Paracha’s long nightmare may be about to end as he has been approved for release as the US feels he is “not a continuing threat”. However, his attorney adds it may take several months for him to be a free man.
While transnational terrorism has thrown up unique challenges for the global community, nothing justifies the torture and abuse of prisoners, or holding individuals without charge for over a decade, as is the case with Guantánamo. The Biden administration must speed up the process of closing down the facility permanently. While at one time it housed over 700 prisoners, today around 40 are still incarcerated at the detention centre. Former US president Barack Obama had early in his tenure called for closing down the gulag but he failed to do so while Donald Trump put the brakes on the process altogether. Now, Joe Biden must do the needful. If there are individuals the US believes have aided or participated in acts of terrorism, they should be tried in courts of law. If not, they should be released. The fact that Washington opened the facility in the first place indicates the Bush administration’s hesitation in allowing the cases to be heard in normal courts. Extra-constitutional and extralegal methods must be avoided as due process is sacrosanct. The lives of numerous individuals have been destroyed in Guantánamo, while they have not been convicted of the crimes they were accused of. How can states that swear by fundamental rights justify the use of such methods in the name of security?
