Whilst the entire world is preoccupied with the Iraq issue and the prospect of a war being waged against Saddam Hussein, our press carries news item after news item of how our politicians persist in wittering on and on about the oaths they are constitutionally required to swear before they can seat themselves as members of our honourable National Assembly and Senate.

Now, every citizen of this country who has read or heard the wording of the oaths is aware that not one political person has in the past upheld the sworn oath and that not one of this new lot is likely to uphold it.

The other obsessive question being raised by the political fraternity is the taking off of the uniform of President General Pervez Musharraf, a futile obsession as any perceptive Pakistani is aware that the general will take off his uniform only when and if a force far greater than that he commands orders him to so do.

Of far more significance are the reports in our press and in the international media on the ever-present subject of tyranny in Pakistan and the suppression of the freedom of its press. The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has, on March 13, addressed a letter to the president of Pakistan, copying the internationally influential press people and press organizations, human rights organizations and other bodies involved in the protection of freedom.

The subject of the letter addressed to the general is the threat allegedly made by Punjab Home Secretary Ejaz Shah to Ilyas Meraj, the publisher of the weekly Independent (a Lahore-based English language publication said to have a print order of a mere thousand copies). Shah reportedly rang Meraj on March 10 to tell him : "Enough is enough. The Punjab government has finally decided to proceed against your newspaper for working against the national interest." This comment was carried by the Independent in its March 13 issue. The CPJ contacted Shah, who denied having made any such comment and said that he had not spoken to anyone at the Independent during the past week.

The CPJ, however, is not satisfied. As it writes in its letter to Musharraf: "However, CPJ believes that because of the serious nature of the allegations,an official inquiry is warranted. The weekly Independent's editor told CPJ that Shah - who is a retired army brigadier, former head of the Punjab division of Pakistan's powerful Inter-Services Intelligence, and a close associate of Your Excellency - advised Meraj to 'roll back' the weekly's operations if he wants to stay in business and stay safe.

Shah allegedly criticized the newspaper for writing against the army and warned Meraj to consider the example of Rana Sanaullah Khan, an opposition politician who has been twice arrested and tortured in official custody in apparent reprisal for his criticism of your military government."

Who is to be believed? But this, of course, unfortunately brings into focus once again the disgraceful treatment meted out to advocate Rana Sanaullah Khan, the PML (N) parliamentary leader in the Punjab Assembly, who for the second time has suffered at the hands of a security agency believed to be ISI.

Soon after the October 1999 Musharraf counter-coup men of one of our 'agencies' picked up Sanaullah, held him in custody, and subjected him to the usual form of torture they employ against their offenders. Sanaullah's crime at that time was to have made 'derogatory' comments against the military government at a PML meeting held at the house of Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain.

This time round, on March 8, whilst leaving his law chambers at the Faisalabad district courts, he was grabbed by, again, 'agency' men, believed to be of the ISI, taken away, humiliated and tortured, and then dumped at a deserted point on the Faisalabad-Pindi Bhattian road. A man with a healthy growth of hair, thick eyebrows and a bushy moustache, when found, after he had got himself to the nearest petrol station, he had lacerations and bruises on his body, a shaven head, no eyebrows and no moustache. Sanaullah claims that he gleaned from the conversations of his captors and torturers that they were indeed men of the ISI and were doing their duty on 'orders from above'.

His present crime, he can only presume, was to have stood up in the Punjab Assembly, spoken out vociferously against the role of the military in Pakistan's politics, and illustrated his criticism with quotes from the Hamoodur Rahman report which was released to the public, after a quarter of a century under wraps, by the government of General Pervez Musharraf.

The violence, the tyranny, to which Sanaullah was subjected must not be allowed to be shelved and forgotten. An inquiry should be ordered and his abductors and torturers suitably dealt with according to the laws of the country. We cannot afford to continue to be classified by the rest of a world as being a nation devoid of law and order.