‘The country is on a suicide mission’

By Zarrar Khuhro

How bad­ly will the mur­der of Rashid Rehman — the lat­est in a ser­ies of at­tacks on hu­man rights ac­ti­vists and es­pe­cial­ly those in­volved in de­fend­ing blas­phemy ac­cused — have a chill­ing ef­fect on ac­ti­vism as a whole?

The mur­der of Rashid is a mes­sage for law­yers to be se­lec­tive about the ca­ses they take up. Defending any­one ac­cused of blas­phemy will not be al­lowed by Islamist mil­i­tants, who kill with im­pun­i­ty. His mur­der fol­lowed the same pat­tern that groups who kill with im­pun­i­ty fol­low. First you kill and then you threat­en any­one else who may fol­low the same path. Pamphlets were dis­trib­uted in the Multan Bar Association, warn­ing that any­one who takes up the de­fence in ca­ses of blas­phemy will meet the same fate. It is high­ly de­mor­al­is­ing for hu­man rights ac­ti­vists who are al­ways at risk and the gov­ern­ment takes threats against them light­ly.

There is the oft-re­pea­ted man­tra of when­ev­er such an at­tack takes place, that this will not damp­en the strug­gle for hu­man rights and jus­tice. Do you think this is still true?

Space for hu­man rights work is shrink­ing by the day. This in­ci­dent will dis­cour­age young ac­ti­vists and blas­phemy ac­cused will not get any le­gal coun­sel at all. In any case, there is al­ways re­luc­tance to join the hu­man rights move­ment as those be­liev­ing in lib­er­al val­ues have al­ways been at the re­ceiv­ing end in this coun­try de­spite the fact that the po­si­tion they took vin­di­ca­ted them. For ex­am­ple, when lib­er­al Pakistanis ex­pressed the de­sire to end hos­til­i­ties with India and Afghanistan they were dub­bed as trai­tors. Now all ma­jor po­lit­i­cal par­ties are tak­ing the same po­si­tion. Other ex­am­ples are the Hadood laws, hon­our kill­ings, sep­a­rate elec­tor­ates, mi­nor­i­ty rights, Balochistan. It was the lib­er­al ac­ti­vists who warned that the kill­ing of Akbar Bugti would add fuel to the in­sur­gen­cy and that blas­phemy laws will be mas­sive­ly mis­used, to name just two such ex­am­ples.

The track re­cord of the courts in pro­vid­ing a fair tri­al to those ac­cused of blas­phemy has been, in a word, abys­mal. Do you ev­er see this chang­ing?

One should not ex­pect a fair tri­al. After all, the bail for someone ac­cused of blas­phemy, who is pro­ven to be men­tal­ly chal­lenged and of an ad­vanced age could on­ly be se­cured at the su­preme court lev­el! Our courts in ef­fect al­low mobs of ul­tra right-wing law­yers and mul­lahs to fill the court room, and these mobs then pro­ceed to ter­ri­fy law­yers, wit­ness­es and even judg­es. This should be stop­ped. Also the gov­ern­ment has so far not been able to ar­rest the kill­ers of Rashid or the at­tack­ers of Hamid Mir. It has failed to pro­tect the lives of its citi­zens. In a coun­try where mem­bers of ban­ned or­gan­i­sa­tions and known ter­ro­rists are en­cour­aged to hold ral­lies in fa­vour of the coun­try's armed forces how can any­one be safe? It is a bra­zen de­fi­ance of peo­ple's se­cur­i­ty and of state se­cur­i­ty.

Is there a pat­tern to watch out for when it comes to at­tacks, ver­bal and phys­i­cal, against such ac­ti­vists in­clud­ing jour­nal­ists and me­dia per­sons? How of­ten does a ver­bal threat in fact lead to phys­i­cal vi­o­lence?

After Rashid's mur­der I urge all hu­man rights ac­ti­vists and jour­nal­ists to take these threats very se­ri­ous­ly. They start though let­ters and now text mes­sag­es and on so­cial me­dia us­ing the most dirty lan­guage and dan­ger­ous­ly false al­le­ga­tions pos­si­ble. They al­so watch you so you should keep your move­ments un­pre­dict­a­ble. If the threat is clear and made by iden­ti­fi­a­ble peo­ple then you may even need to re­lo­cate. You should al­so al­ways keep the po­lice in­formed — not that they can do any­thing, of course. You should write to the au­thor­i­ties and frank­ly do all that you can, but with the knowl­edge that the state is help­less. A for­mer PM and Governor's chil­dren have been kid­nap­ped by mil­i­tants and no one can do any­thing for those un­for­tu­nate young peo­ple. What was their fault?

This is a clichéd ques­tion, of course, but where can one pin the fail­ure of the state to pro­vide even a sem­blance of se­cur­i­ty to peo­ple who are quite lit­er­al­ly be­ing threat­ened with death? In this I mean both those ac­cused of blas­phemy and those de­fend­ing them.

Those who have a nexus with state ac­tors have as­sur­ed im­pun­i­ty. Others who aren’t that lucky re­al­ise that the sys­tem sim­ply does not work, so they have ef­fec­tive im­pun­i­ty be­cause of a dys­func­tion­al crim­i­nal le­gal sys­tem. And then of course there are re­por­ted ca­ses where the state has al­so got away quite of­ten with threats and mur­der. It has been re­cor­ded in the Supreme Court in the miss­ing per­sons’ case and the com­mis­sion on Salim Shahzad al­ludes to it as does the com­mis­sion on miss­ing peo­ple.

So what meas­ures can ac­tual­ly be tak­en in such a sit­ua­tion?

On the most ba­sic lev­el, we need to make an au­ton­o­mous pub­lic pros­e­cu­tor sys­tem and an au­ton­o­mous for­en­sic in­ves­ti­ga­tion de­part­ment. We al­so need judg­es who are cou­ra­geous and ap­poin­ted on mer­it. But none of these ba­sic in­gre­di­ents are there at the mo­ment. Most im­por­tant­ly, we have to de­cide as a na­tion wheth­er we want to sur­ren­der our sov­er­eign­ty to Talibanisation or chal­lenge them col­lec­tive­ly? Watch the cir­cus go­ing on nowa­days; no gov­ern­ment can work if it is un­der con­stant threat from the es­tab­lish­ment who have pup­pets they can roll out in the streets and spread dis­in­for­ma­tion. A coun­try that can­not fight po­lio and deal with a law that is so ob­vi­ous­ly be­ing mis­used to set­tle scores can on­ly be pi­tied.When Pakistan’s his­to­ry will be ob­jec­tive­ly writ­ten it will be the most docu­men­ted case of a coun­try where treach­ery ruled and won. It’s no lon­ger a few mis­led in­di­vid­u­als, but the coun­try it­self that is on a sui­cide mis­sion. Only God can save us from our­selves.

Published in Dawn, Sunday Magazine, May 18th, 2014

The chilling effect

Why tell­ing the truth in the land of the pure is life-threat­en­ing

by Razeshta Setna

Last year, the Ministry of Law, Justice and Human Rights in­formed par­lia­ment about 8,648 rights vi­o­la­tions that had oc­cur­red across Pakistan. These in­clu­ded vi­o­lence against wom­en, sec­tar­i­an vi­o­lence and tar­get kill­ings, sex­u­al har­ass­ment and oth­er vi­o­la­tions that were re­por­ted to the po­lice. This fig­ure al­so in­clu­ded 141 ca­ses of miss­ing per­sons, 47 of which were from Balochistan, the Ministry sta­ted. However, rights vi­o­la­tions re­la­ted to the blas­phemy laws were not sta­ted as such, but what was no­ted in the list (and is open to in­ter­pre­ta­tion) was that there had been ‘20 mi­nor­i­ty-re­la­ted is­sues.’ There is a lack of state ac­knowl­edge­ment that un­pop­u­lar vic­tims of vi­o­la­tions need le­gal coun­sel, ad­vice and in many ca­ses, pro­tec­tion. But as mil­i­tant ideas and in­tol­er­ance be­come in­creas­ing­ly main­stream, it is hu­man rights de­fend­ers them­selves that are the tar­get of ex­trem­ist groups op­er­at­ing with im­pun­i­ty.

When I pro­vi­ded a safe-house for the gang-rape sur­vi­vor and her fa­ther dur­ing the court hear­ing, the po­lice filed a case against me for kid­nap­ping the wom­an and her fa­ther

Questioning the state’s ca­paci­ty and will to es­tab­lish the rule of law, Sam Zarifi, the Asia Pacific Regional Director at the International Commission of Jurists, says the coun­try is con­ced­ing space to ex­trem­ists. “A gov­ern­ment that can­not pro­tect its peo­ple is sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly fail­ing in its re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and can­not call it­self a sov­er­eign state,” he says. Zarifi be­lieves that when it comes to rep­re­sen­ta­tion, the le­gal com­mun­i­ty must unite and sign up to rep­re­sent un­pop­u­lar de­fend­ants need­ing le­gal as­sis­tance. But in an at­mos­phere in which ex­trem­ists threat­en and mur­der with im­pun­i­ty, this is eas­ier sug­ges­ted than im­ple­men­ted.

The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP), a credi­ble chroni­cler of rights vi­o­la­tions known to lob­by and in­ter­vene through the courts, fo­cu­ses on as­sis­tance for vic­tims of rights vi­o­la­tions; high­lights the is­sue of en­forced dis­ap­pear­an­ces, vi­o­lence against wom­en and mi­nor­i­ties and of­fers le­gal de­fense for those ac­cused of blas­phemy. It has paid a high price for its stance. In March 2011, Naeem Sabir Jamaldini, HRCP’s Khuzdar dis­trict co­or­di­na­tor was shot for his work re­port­ing on rights vi­o­la­tions and doc­u­ment­ing Baloch miss­ing per­sons; HRCP’s Pasni co­or­di­na­tor, Siddique Eido, was ab­duc­ted in 2010 in Gwadar and his body found in April 2011. Zarteef Khan Afridi, a teach­er and an HRCP ac­ti­vist in Khyber Agency since 1989, had been re­ceiv­ing threats from the Taliban. He re­fused to leave the dis­trict when he was kil­led in Jamrud in December 2011, says HRCP chair­per­son, Zohra Yusuf. He would ad­vo­cate the rights of wom­en and girls and had trained school teach­ers which won him the ha­tred of ex­trem­ist and ob­scur­ant­ist forces who op­posed his cri­tique of semi­na­ries. “The space for ra­tion­al de­bate is shrink­ing,” she says.

Yet an­oth­er le­gal ac­ti­vist who had worked with HRCP for over two dec­a­des lost his life ear­li­er this month. Rashid Rehman, known for his un­wav­er­ing com­mit­ment pro­vid­ing as­sis­tance to de­fend­ants with­out le­gal rep­re­sen­ta­tion, had re­fused to suc­cumb to the threats. Rehman, gun­ned down in his Multan of­fice, was threat­ened in an open court for de­fend­ing a uni­ver­si­ty pro­fes­sor — pre­vi­ous­ly un­able to find a le­gal rep­re­sen­ta­tion for a year — in a blas­phemy case. He had al­so de­fen­ded Pakistan’s for­mer am­bas­sa­dor to the US in a fab­ri­ca­ted blas­phemy case in Multan. A 2012 study by the Islamabad-based think tank, the Center for Research and Security Studies shows an in­crease in blas­phemy ac­cu­sa­tions with 80 com­plaints in 2011, up from a sin­gle case in 2001. “Extremist groups are suc­cess­ful­ly tar­get­ing eth­nic and re­li­gious mi­nor­i­ties and any­body who dares to speak out in their de­fence, right up to a gov­ern­ment min­is­ter is tar­ge­ted, which means stra­te­gi­cal­ly iso­lat­ing these com­mun­i­ties so that they don’t have any al­lies,” Zarifi points out.

“Many be­lieve that some ac­cused don’t have a right to rep­re­sen­ta­tion by law­yers,” say Yusuf, cit­ing the mur­der of Justice Arif Iqbal Bhatti who ac­quit­ted two Christian boys in a 1995 blas­phemy case. Bhatti, who had re­ceived nu­mer­ous death threats, was mur­dered in 1997.

Human rights groups have long cam­paigned against Pakistan’s blas­phemy laws, which car­ry a death pen­al­ty and are fre­quent­ly used to set­tle per­son­al scores and per­se­cute re­li­gious mi­nor­i­ties. Evidence is rare­ly pre­sen­ted in court and judg­es are re­luc­tant to hear ca­ses. There is no pen­al­ty for false ac­cu­sa­tions. Indeed, the scope of the law seems to be wid­en­ing, as seen in the re­cent ex­am­ple where the Punjab po­lice reg­is­tered a case of blas­phemy against 68 law­yers who pub­lic­ly pro­tes­ted af­ter a po­lice of­fi­cer de­tained one of their col­lea­gues.

As a law­yer who has de­fen­ded an ac­cused in a blas­phemy case ex­plains, the im­me­di­ate re­ac­tion was shock when oth­er as­so­ci­ates heard he was in­volved in such pro­ceed­ings. “It was as if I de­served to be at­tacked [if that hap­pened] for pro­vid­ing le­gal as­sis­tance,” he re­calls. Speaking to Dawn on con­di­tion of ano­nym­i­ty, he says he was warned and rough­ed up by a group of law­yers with­in the prem­ises of the SC for his in­volve­ment. It is com­mon to hear of low­er courts con­vict­ing the ac­cused in blas­phemy ca­ses, some­times on lit­tle credi­ble evi­dence, due to the fear of mob vi­o­lence if there is no con­vic­tion.

“Blasphemy ca­ses are in a lea­gue of their own be­cause of the kind of emo­tions they evoke, of­ten fol­lowed by vi­o­lent vig­i­lante ac­tions. While le­gal­ly rep­re­sent­ing vul­ner­a­ble groups, there is pres­sure and in­tim­i­da­tion, but the in­se­cur­i­ty felt as an ad­vo­cate while de­fend­ing a blas­phemy case is un­like any­thing else,” says se­nior ad­vo­cate, Salman Raja.

Other hu­man rights work al­so evokes re­ac­tion from po­lit­i­cal­ly-backed per­pe­tra­tors. When Raja ad­vo­ca­ted for jus­tice for a 13-year-old vic­tim in Rawalpindi, he was warned to with­draw from the case in March 2012. This led the Chief Justice to or­der a se­cur­i­ty con­tin­gent for Raja and rights ac­ti­vist Tahira Abdullah for a year. Raja ex­plains that he in­ter­vened with Abdullah’s help en­sur­ing that the SC took suo mo­to no­tice of the case and an FIR was lodged against the ac­cused. “I rush­ed to the court and filed a pe­ti­tion when I read the story in Dawn about the pros­e­cu­tor gen­er­al ac­quit­ting the ac­cused per­sons. The rape sur­vi­vor and her fam­i­ly had been threat­ened by the pow­er­ful per­pe­tra­tors to stay si­lent and ac­cept com­pen­sa­tion. They were very poor and afraid of be­ing seen talk­ing to a law­yer. The girl told us she had been gang-ra­ped. The IG told me in court that I was wast­ing time. When I pro­vi­ded a safe-house for the gang-rape sur­vi­vor and her fa­ther dur­ing the court hear­ing, the po­lice filed a case against me for kid­nap­ping the wom­an and her fa­ther.” Raja says the po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion was so shod­dy that, with­out evi­dence, there was no case. “In 99 per cent of rape ca­ses the ac­cused walk away free. There is no for­en­sic evi­dence that links the ac­cused to the crime. Rape has be­come a mat­ter to be ne­go­ti­ated be­tween the vic­tim and the ac­cused with the po­lice mere­ly bro­ker­ing the deal.”

Human rights work is un­like hu­man­i­tar­i­an work when re­sults ap­pear quick­ly. It takes dec­a­des of cour­age and re­sil­ience with ac­ti­vists and groups nee­ded to keep tap­ping away for the de­sired change. “The HRCP have a track re­cord of stand­ing with the op­pressed. They have had to play the role of an op­po­si­tion po­lit­i­cal par­ty in Pakistan through con­sis­tent ad­vo­ca­cy al­though they are old-fash­ioned and work with limi­ted re­sour­ces,” says jour­nal­ist Mohammad Hanif, who docu­men­ted the sto­ries of miss­ing per­sons in The Baloch who is not miss­ing any­more. Rights de­fend­ers like the ac­ti­vists who cam­paign for miss­ing per­sons, pol­i­ti­cians who ad­vo­cate for the rights of the mar­gin­al­ised mi­nor­i­ty and the ad­vo­cates who pro­vide un­pop­u­lar de­fend­ants with le­gal as­sis­tance —wheth­er it is the for­mer President Musharraf or blas­phemy ac­cused or rape vic­tims — are in­creas­ing­ly at risk. The re­sult is that, while stand­ing up for hu­man rights re­mains a no­ble cause, it is al­so in­creas­ing­ly dan­ger­ous.

Equally im­por­tant­ly, it is it­self a right un­der in­ter­na­tion­al pro­tec­tion placed in December 1998 un­der the spe­cial pro­tec­tion of the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mun­i­ty, ex­plains Angelika Pathak, a se­nior re­search­er at Amnesty International.

“Pakistan, as a mem­ber of the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mun­i­ty, com­mit­ted it­self to pro­tect­ing and safe­guard­ing the rights of hu­man rights de­fend­ers when the Declaration on Human Rights Defenders was adop­ted. It en­tered in­ter­na­tion­al le­gal ob­li­ga­tions to en­sure the rights to life, the se­cur­i­ty of the per­son, to free­dom from tor­ture and ar­bi­tra­ry ar­rest and de­ten­tion and from en­forced dis­ap­pear­ance when it rati­fied the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Convention Against Torture in 2010; such com­mit­ment al­so in­cludes the ob­li­ga­tion to ex­er­cise due dil­i­gence in pro­tect­ing any­one, in­clud­ing hu­man rights de­fend­ers, against abu­ses by pri­vate per­sons,” she adds.

In prac­tice, few of these com­mit­ments are hon­our­ed. When look­ing for ways to en­sure vic­tims ac­cused in blas­phemy ca­ses are giv­en ac­cess to jus­tice, Salman Raja sug­gests the need to think along the lines of the ma­fia tri­als in Italy that were trans­fer­red from or­di­na­ry courts to se­cret lo­ca­tions with law­yers and judg­es whose iden­ti­ties were pro­tec­ted. It would be rad­i­cal, he con­cedes, but with an ef­fec­tive wit­ness pro­tec­tion pro­gramme this ap­proach could ad­min­is­ter jus­tice with­out fear. Measures to pro­tect rights de­fend­ers against abu­ses and in­ves­ti­gate in­stan­ces of such abu­ses brought to its no­tice with a view to bring­ing per­pe­tra­tors to jus­tice is some­thing the gov­ern­ment has sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly ig­nor­ed and so to fight in­jus­tice many more de­fend­ers will risk their lives.

Published in Dawn, Sunday Magazine, May 18th, 2014

All honourable men

By Nazish Brohi

The hon­our­a­ble ones are com­fort­a­bly in the nu­cleus of pow­er. Whatever else they may or may not be on the same page about, they unite in a fra­ter­ni­ty — the Brotherhood of the Ghairat Brigade — when it comes to pro­tect­ing our hal­lowed sov­er­eign­i­ty.

Every time the state fails in pro­tect­ing its citi­zens, or is com­plic­it in per­se­cu­tion of them, the po­lit­i­cal le­giti­ma­cy of its sov­er­eign­ty gets cor­ro­ded.

With their vig­i­lance, we have been pro­tec­ted against Raymond Davis, Haqqani’s Memos, Kerry Lugar’s in­cur­sion in­to South Punjab, SEAL in­cur­sions in­to Abbotabad and US op­er­at­ed drones. Citizens of Pakistan are now free to be hon­o­ra­bly kil­led by sec­tar­i­an mil­i­tants tar­get­ing Shias and mod­er­ates; by Taliban ji­ha­dis tar­get­ing dis­sent­ers from their world view; by vig­i­lante groups whose faith gets shak­en at the slight­est pre­text or prov­o­ca­tion; and in­deed, by the state it­self. The dis­tance be­tween hon­our and dis­hon­our is de­ter­mined by whose weap­on one is kil­led by, it seems.

Because what the guards of hon­or over­look is that sov­er­eign­ty ne­ces­si­tates a mo­ral im­per­a­tive on the state, which is to pro­tect citi­zens in­side its ter­ri­to­ry. The so­cial con­tract, through which in­di­vid­u­als sub­mit to the au­thor­i­ty of rul­ers in ex­change for pro­tec­tion, is the mech­a­nism that be­stows po­lit­i­cal le­giti­ma­cy on re­po­si­to­ries of sov­er­eign pow­er. Every time the state fails in pro­tect­ing its citi­zens, or is com­plic­it in per­se­cu­tion of them, the po­lit­i­cal le­giti­ma­cy of its sov­er­eign­ty gets cor­ro­ded.

While le­gal­ly rep­re­sent­ing vul­ner­a­ble groups, there is pres­sure and in­tim­i­da­tion, but the in­se­cur­i­ty felt as an ad­vo­cate while de­fend­ing a blas­phemy case is un­like any­thing else

Why then should citi­zens not sim­ply dis­pense with this ar­ti­fice? Consider the sig­nals that em­a­nate from the state it­self. Children get­ting crip­pled with po­lio and health work­ers get­ting kil­led did not cause pan­ic as ne­go­tia­tions with the per­pe­tra­tors con­tin­ued, till the World Health Organisation wiel­ded a stick and now there are emer­gen­cy cor­rec­tives. It took the European Union’s threats to place a mor­a­to­ri­um on cap­i­tal pun­ish­ments. It took the US Congressional hear­ing on Balochistan that forced the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment to look in the south­west di­rec­tion. It took in­ter­na­tion­al threats be­fore the forced dec­la­ra­tion from Pakistan that it was il­le­gal­ly trans­fer­ring nu­cle­ar tech­nol­o­gy. It took the asi­nine but mem­o­ra­ble ‘with us or against us’ ul­ti­ma­tum from the US President be­fore we de­ci­ded to do some­thing, how­ev­er nom­i­nal, about home­grown Jihadi or­gan­i­sa­tions. All these were im­por­tant hu­man rights and civ­il rights is­sues. The on­ly hope many per­se­cu­ted citi­zens of Pakistan have is to claim asy­lum and pro­tec­tion from oth­er gov­ern­ments of oth­er coun­tries be­cause their own state can­not or will not pro­tect them. Why should peo­ple then be ves­ted in the sov­er­eign­ty dis­course? When the state is not even will­ing to col­lect tax­es due to it on its own with­out it be­ing a loan con­di­tion­al­i­ty?

This is not to as­sume that oth­er coun­tries have the best in­ter­est of Pakistanis at their heart, but to ac­knowl­edge that while they may not, nei­ther does the Pakistani state. Because mean­while, the very peo­ple who could of­fer the coun­try a way out of this mo­rass, who in­ves­ted their lives in ed­u­cat­ing young­er gen­er­a­tions and en­a­bling those at the mar­gins of so­ci­ety have been sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly tar­ge­ted and kil­led such as Parveen Rehman, the di­rec­tor of Orangi Pilot Project; Dr. Farooq Khan, Vice Chancellor of Swat University; Baloch schol­ar Saba Dashtyari; Muhammad Yousuf, lec­tur­er at NED University; Zarteef Afridi, gov­ern­ment school teach­er in Khyber Agency and en­vi­ron­men­tal ac­ti­vist Nisar Baloch. This is in ad­di­tion to tar­geted kill­ings of scores of Shia law­yers, doc­tors, teach­ers and oth­er pro­fes­sio­nals in Karachi and count­less lead­ers and peace ac­ti­vists in Khyber Pukhtunkhwa — in fur­ther ad­di­tion to the nu­mer­ous stu­dent lead­ers and edu­ca­ted youth who have ‘dis­ap­peared’ from Balochistan.

The re­cent mur­der of hero­ic law­yer Rashid Rehman, an­nounced in ad­vance and de­fen­ded through pam­phlets post kill­ing, high­lights state com­plic­i­ty in pain­ful clari­ty. This in­spira­tion­al fig­ure was kil­led by ‘un­known peo­ple’ for de­fend­ing Junaid Hafeez, a uni­ver­si­ty lec­tur­er on tri­al for an im­plau­si­ble charge of blas­phemy. The state is not just re­spon­si­ble for al­low­ing a law on stat­utes that is so open to mis­use, but al­so for not giv­ing Rehman the pro­tec­tion when it was known he was un­der threat. Above all it is re­spon­si­ble for crim­i­nal short­sight­ed­ness. While the div­i­dends for re­mov­al of the blas­phemy law may be mar­gin­al and prob­lem­at­ic (let’s ad­mit it, there is a nar­row con­stit­u­en­cy for it), it is sheer stu­pid­i­ty to not re­al­ise how blas­phemy re­la­ted lynch­ings harm the very no­tion of state sov­er­eign­ty.

As laws in Pakistan pro­fess to be groun­ded in Islam, the source of the law takes prec­e­dence over the con­tents of the law. Combined with un­checked vig­i­lant­ism, an ‘au­ton­o­mous cit­i­zen­ship’ that en­a­bles col­lec­tive pre­medi­ta­ted use of force, fo­ments a ‘law im­ple­men­ta­tion drive’ where the drive con­tra­venes the law it­self. Until the rule of law is se­cu­lar­ised, this di­lem­ma will con­tin­ue.

The im­pun­i­ty the state al­lows to non-state ac­tors is in­ver­se­ly pro­por­tion­ate to the state’s mo­nop­o­ly of vi­o­lence, which con­tin­ues to re­cede. In ex­tend­ing this im­pun­i­ty, the state is slow poi­son­ing it­self.

Published in Dawn, Sunday Magazine, May 18th, 2014