Apart from making the right and wrong noises, from leading protest marches and demonstrations, from allowing photo- opportunities to the various political leaders, there is little this nation can do to halt the war in Iraq. Correctly, the annual display of military might at the annual March 23 Republic Day parade was this year cancelled by our military leaders and the 'chand-sitara' award ceremony was held under wraps.

Our neighbours and brothers-in-arms have also done well. The Sheikhs went ahead last night with their annual Dubai Festival World Cup horse race meeting at Al Quoz at which horses from all over the world were charged with defending the richest prizes ever offered on a racetrack.

However, this nation must now apply its inherent genius to the massive task of revamping the minds of the institutionalized tyrants who rule over it. Each and every government, of whatever hue, is imbued with the strange compulsion to tyrannize its own people.

Following the recent 'picking-up' and subsequent roughing-up and harassment of Rana Sanaullah of the PML(N), deputy leader of the opposition in the Punjab assembly, the matter was discussed by his fellow MPAs at an assembly meeting on March 21 but nothing of any merit or substance was debated or recorded. He has, however, managed to file an FIR at the Kotwali police station in Faisalabad. But will the case ever be heard?

Last Sunday, March 23, the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan held a meeting in Hyderabad. Whilst some of the HRCP office bearers were on the bus back to Karachi they received news that their man in Hyderabad, Akhtar Baloch, had been abducted by a bunch of men travelling in a Potohar Suzuki jeep with illegally tinted windows.

He was roughed up, asked inane questions about the funding of the HRCP and his links with foreign 'agencies'. Baloch was also reminded of how in 1999 the editor of The Friday Times, Najam Sethi, had been dealt with. Finally, after a rumpus had been raised in the press and elsewhere, and 'contacts' contacted, Baloch was released and dumped on a rural roadside on the night of March 25.

If this government is anxious to learn who funds the HRCP its men should go to the source, to Asma Jehangir, and ask her for details. They can email her at aghs@brain.net.pk.

Sethi's ordeal must not be forgotten. At 0230 hours on the morning of May 9, 1999, eleven armed men (two in police uniforms) invaded Sethi's Lahore house, broke the windows of the bedroom in which Najam and his wife were sleeping, entered, held Jugnu at gunpoint and proceeded to beat up Najam with the butts of their guns. When asked by Jugnu if they had a warrant, they replied with Punjabi obscenities and informed her that they had a 'death warrant' for Najam.

He was dragged out of his house, bleeding, with his clothes in tatters, then gagged, blindfolded and handcuffed. He was driven off to some sort of 'safe house', pushed down a flight of stairs into a basement, and left on the floor. (At this stage Najam had a heart attack which was later confirmed at a medical check-up when he was handed over to the ISI.)

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, who had him arrested, requested his chief of army staff, General Pervez Musharraf, to court martial Najam, to which the obvious reply was given: 'How can I court-martial a civilian?'

Najam was moved from the Lahore safe house to a Rawalpindi safe house and at no stage was he mistreated. But his wife and family suffered greatly as they had no idea where he was and were unable to even find out whether he was alive or dead.

The journalist fraternity, both in Pakistan and internationally, rallied to Najam's cause, and constant solid support came from the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists. With the help of friends - Asma Jehangir, Dr Khalid Ranjha and Shabbar Raza Rizvi - Jugnu approached the courts, firstly the Lahore High Court, to which friends from all over the country arrived to sit by Jugnu at the hearings.

The presiding judge, Fakir Mohammad Khokhar, dismissed the habeas corpus petition on the grounds that as it was an 'army case' he had no jurisdiction. And this despite the fact that the ISPR had issued a statement declaring that the armed forces 'had nothing to do with Najam Sethi' case and that the ISI was holding him on the orders of the prime minister.

The then information minister, Mushahid Hussain, and accountability chief Saifur Rehman sent various back-channelled messages to Jugnu conveying that she should 'talk things over' with them and 'stop making such a ruckus'. Knowing that Najam's freedom was not something to be granted to her as a favour from the prime minister and his Hussain-Rehman henchmen, but that freedom was his fundamental right, Jugnu did the right thing and went to the Supreme Court of Pakistan.

Chief Justice Saeeduzzaman Siddiqui, sitting with Justices Mohammad Arif and Mamoon Kazi, spent three weeks wrangling with the attorney-general, persisting in asking for details of which laws, if any, Sethi had transgressed, and finally with no cogent answers having been given, the court decided to order his release. On June 3 Najam regained his freedom.

A highly irritated Saifur Rehman lashed out in an attempt to involve Sethi in an anti-terrorist case. It failed. So he then unleashed the tax authorities on him, arranged for threatening phone calls to be made to his house and office, and generally launched a campaign of harassment, so much so that the Sethis were forced to move out of their own house and for weeks on end to stay with various friends and relatives.

When will we, the people, be able to prevent the harassment and torture of their own people by the civil or military governments imposed on us? How is it that the governments of Pakistan are allowed to invariably conduct themselves and behave, with impunity and a remarkable sense of right, as if they are way above and beyond the rule of law. Helpless we are - and unless we get up and revolutionize our senses, helpless we will remain.