A step forward
ALTHOUGH her post is temporary at the moment, Justice Musarrat Hilali has nevertheless made history by being nominated as the first female chief justice of the Peshawar High Court. She will hold the position of acting chief justice until her nomination is — hopefully — confirmed by the Judicial Commission of Pakistan. Justice Hilali’s elevation follows the historic appointment last year of Justice Ayesha Malik as the Supreme Court’s first female judge. The new PHC CJ has had a distinguished career as a lawyer and held other senior public offices. She has also been a strong advocate for human rights. If she is made the permanent chief justice, she would be only the second woman to head a provincial high court, after Justice Syeda Tahira Safdar took oath as Balochistan High Court CJ in 2018. Justice Hilali’s nomination may appear as only a drop in the ocean. Yet given the anti-women attitudes that prevail in Pakistan, this is no small victory, especially considering that she and Justice Safdar managed to reach the highest judicial post in Balochistan and KP, which are regarded as Pakistan’s most conservative provinces.
The presence of more female judges in the lower judiciary as well as in the high courts can help women secure justice. While justice is indeed supposed to be blind, as Justice Ayesha Malik has noted, bringing a “gender perspective” to the courtroom is important. Moreover, in a male-dominated society like Pakistan, where, in many places, females are viewed as chattel, a woman heading a courtroom sends a powerful message. More women should be encouraged to enter the legal profession, and the barriers standing in the way of their career growth and their place on the bench need to be removed. In particular, a women-friendly atmosphere — accommodative of female judges, lawyers and litigants — needs to be created in the lower courts, where the bulk of cases are filed.
Published in Dawn, March 31st, 2023
Sedition law
IN the midst of all the gloom and despair, the Lahore High Court has given the country something to genuinely cheer for. In what could prove a watershed in Pakistan’s legal history, the Lahore High Court has deemed Section 124-A of the Pakistan Penal Code inconsistent with the Constitution of Pakistan.
Section 124-A, more commonly known as the ‘sedition law’, is an ugly relic of our colonial past. Introduced by our colonial overlords in 1870 and reflective of their desire for total control over the populations they ruled, it was used to browbeat dissenters posing any inconvenient challenge to the ruling classes.
The British may have long left the subcontinent and repealed their own sedition law in 2010, but both Pakistan and India continued to cling to this legacy.
In its current form, 124-A of the PPC reads: “Whoever […] brings or attempts to bring into hatred or contempt or […] excite disaffection towards, the Federal or Provincial Government established by law shall be punished […]”, with the punishments ranging in severity from life imprisonment to a fine. Overtly, in the words of a recent proponent, the law protects the “security and sanctity of the state”; in reality, it essentially criminalises political dissent.
Prominent victims have included independence movement notables like Gandhiji and Bal Gangadhar Tilak (whose case the Quaid-i-Azam himself fought as a young lawyer), and, later, anti-establishment icons like Faiz Ahmed Faiz.
In more recent history, Pashtun Tahaffuz Movement leaders, such as Manzoor Pashteen, leftist leaders like Ammar Ali Jan, and assorted leaders of the PTI, such as Shehbaz Gill and Fawad Chaudhry, have faced detention under the same laws.
The Lahore High Court’s ruling is being celebrated in the legal community, as it should be. It is hoped that this is the start of the reversal of not just the dated sedition law, but also other repugnant laws from the colonial era, like the Maintenance of Public Order Ordinance, which have no place in any modern, democratic society. For too long, the state has brutalised its own people under various pretexts to maintain what it sees as ‘order’ and ‘control’.
It is about time that our social contract is rewritten to reflect the primacy of the public’s right to democratic expression and dissent.
Published in Dawn, March 31st, 2023
The truth about ‘Dawn leaks’
IT was, much like many manufactured crises in the country’s history, a case of overweening ambition and untrammeled power. According to part three of an interview that former army chief Gen Qamar Javed Bajwa reportedly gave journalist Shahid Maitla, the furore over a Dawn story published in October 2016 was deliberately played up by his predecessor, Gen Raheel Sharif, in an effort to wrangle an extension from then prime minister Nawaz Sharif.
The ploy did not work, and Gen Sharif retired in November. But it set in motion events that undermined the government, as such schemes are designed to do; unjustly maligned this newspaper, which was simply doing its duty to inform the public accurately and objectively; and put a journalist’s life in peril.
The article in question, published only after the information was verified from multiple sources, was an account of what had transpired at meetings between the PML-N government and the military high command. In an unusually blunt warning, the civilian leadership told the top brass to act against militant outfits or risk the country being isolated internationally.
Instead of discarding the myopic strategy regarding militants, the episode was used to cut ‘down to size’ a civilian leadership that was telling the establishment to change tack, and to humiliate a prime minister refusing to acquiesce to the chief’s desire for an extension.
Buckling under intense pressure from the powers that be, the Prime Minister Office issued denials of the report’s contents and placed the writer, Cyril Almeida, on the ECL. ‘Dawn leaks’, as it came to be known, was also harnessed to attack this paper’s integrity through a vicious social media campaign that accused it of being ‘anti-state’ and peddling ‘fake news’.
But life has a way of coming full circle. Subsequent events, including the placing of Pakistan in 2018 on the FATF’s grey list for allegedly not doing enough to curb terror financing and money laundering, and the crackdown on banned extremist groups that finally began after that, are testament to the veracity of the Dawn story and the paper’s stance on militancy in general.
Since Imran Khan’s ouster, more inconvenient truths have come spilling out as the establishment’s edifice of invincibility (where its political machinations are concerned) develops cracks one could not have foreseen even a year ago. The campaign against Dawn was a clear act of malice and the suspension of its distribution in various cantonments a brazen attempt to damage it financially.
Gen Bajwa shares the blame for this as hearings were conducted by a government-appointed inquiry committee during his tenure, despite him knowing the facts behind the saga, and Dawn was pressured — unsuccessfully — to reveal its sources for the story. One may ask why the committee’s report has not been made public. Perhaps there are more unsavoury facts within its pages.
Published in Dawn, March 31st, 2023