ISLAMABAD, Sept 11: Law Minister Farooq H. Naek told a Senate committee on Thursday that his ministry had proposed amendments to the Frontier Crime Regulations, including removal of collective punishment and setting up tribunals to hear appeals against decrees of political agents.

The amendments, which also seek to rename the FCR as Frontier Regulations, will be presented to President Asif Ali Zardari for approval later this month.

A meeting of the Senate Functional Committee on Human Rights assessed the government’s relief and rehabilitation efforts for more than 300,000 people displaced from the troubled Bajaur Agency.There was a heated debate in the committee over the role of Pakistan army which was accused by some of the Senators of killing its own people, by using helicopter gunships.

Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani had announced in the National Assembly on March 25 that the FCR would be abrogated. But he faced criticism from Fata parliamentarians who demanded amendments to the draconian law, rather than its scrapping.

The law minister told the committee that a tribunal headed by a retired high court judge with two other members from the Fata Secretariat would be set up under the amended FCR. The tribunal would curtail powers of political agents, he added.

Members of the committee severely criticised Mr Naek for repeatedly asking “does the Constitution of Pakistan extend to Fata” when Senators Prof Khurshid Ahmed, Dr Khalid Ranjha and Dr Mohammad Said termed the military operation illegal and called it state terrorism which violated the basic human rights. The three Senators said that those who had ordered the operation needed to be exposed because parliament had been kept in the dark over the issue.

Prof Khurshid asked the minister whether Fata was not part of Pakistan and the tribal people should not get even basic human rights if the Constitution was not extended to the area.

Dr Mohammad Said observed that the pilots of helicopter gunships were taking their allowances in US dollars. He said the nation must be informed at whose behest such a massive operation had been launched.

He read out a pamphlet allegedly distributed by the Pakistan army in Bajaur asking people to stand still with their hands up whenever they see an army helicopter hovering over an area. The pamphlet also warned that if an armed man was seen in a public transport or in any vehicle all the occupants could be targeted.

Interior Secretary Syed Kamal Shah said he had sought a report on the pamphlet which gave such warnings to the people.

Senator Hafez Rashid Ahmed said that 97 per cent of the people killed or injured during the military operation in Bajaur were innocent people. He alleged that the helicopter gunships and artillery deliberately avoided hitting the hideouts of some militants in the area, giving credence to a general perception that the militants were working for the army.

Committee chairman S. M. Zafar praised the relief efforts of the federal and provincial governments for dealing with the massive and unprecedented displacement from Bajaur, but urged the authorities to also come up with a plan for giving compensation to the affected people.

Members of the committee, however, said that relief goods provided to various camps in Lower Dir, Charsadda and other areas of the NWFP were not enough even for 20,000 people, while 45 per cent of the 800,000 people of Bajaur had been displaced.

They said there was little information about medicines and doctors provided for the displaced people and children and women were suffering from various diseases, including diarrhoea and gastroenteritis.