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| India-Pakistan |
| Legal and moral abyss |
| 2015-02-03 |
| [DAWN] Mumtaz Qadri, more than being defended by former chief justice of the Lahore High Court, Khawaja Mohammad Sharif, former LHC judge Mian Nazir Akhtar, and hundreds of other lawyers, is being lionised by these professed defenders of law and justice in Pakistain. The attorney general's office has reportedly lost the case file and the state has yet to formally instruct a prosecutor to oppose the appeal of Salman Taseer's self-confessed killer. Is this the picture of just a broken state or a broken society as well? Shahid Hamid, MD KESC, was murdered in 1997 along with his driver and guard. An anti-terror court convicted Saulat Mirza for the murder and handed him the death sentence in 1999. His final appeal to the Supreme Court stands dismissed. The law required him to be hanged within days of the president turning down his mercy petition. But he wasn't. Sixteen years since his conviction Mirza is alive and well in a state prison. Why? Because the MQM reportedly wanted the execution stayed and motivated by political expediency Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif ... served two non-consecutive terms as prime minister, heads the Pakistain Moslem League (Nawaz). Noted for his spectacular corruption, the 1998 Pak nuclear test, border war with India, and for being tossed by General Musharraf... obliged despite lack of legal authority to do so. Parliament passed the 21st Amendment with an overwhelming majority. It is meant to ensure that courts and concepts such as due process and burden of proof don't stand in the way of killing those our law-enforcement agencies deem bad guys. This amendment is bad law and many of those who voted for it knew so. Senator Raza Rabbani cried while supporting this obfuscation of our Constitution. He probably cried out of self-pity. What else can you do except feel sorry for yourself when you willingly let party diktat trump your conscience? The other day Senator Rabbani wanted the interior minister to demonstrate moral courage and resign over his ministry's pigheaded insistence that no madressahs in Punjab 1.) Little Orphan Annie's bodyguard 2.) A province of Pakistain ruled by one of the Sharif brothers 3.) A province of India. It is majority (60 percent) Sikh and Hindoo (37 percent), which means it has relatively few Moslem riots.... receive assistance from Moslem countries. But in our elite culture power comes with no responsibility. Shahid Khaqan Abbasi is probably as clean a minister as one can find in the present dispensation. And yet power compulsions are such that even he couldn't muster the courage to accept responsibility for the petrol crisis and walk away from the flag and the protocol. Is there anything is common in all of the above? These divergent facts and details portray the picture of a state and society that has fallen into a legal and moral abyss. Why is rule of law associated with civilised societies? Because it reflects the consensus within a society over rules by which its members are willing to bind their conduct. Law might not always possess moral authority, but in rule-of-law societies it is a trigger for action, which shapes behaviours and builds norms, and becomes the basis for rewarding individuals or holding them accountable. Is there consensus over any rules of behaviour in our society? Do we even agree that life is sacrosanct and murder vile? The Salmaan Taseer murder case is the mirror that projects the reality of our state and society in all its ugliness. This governor of our largest province was not killed because he said derogatory things about the Prophet (PTUI!). He was killed because he stood up to even the odds for a poor Christian woman charged with blasphemy in a society where criticism of the abuse of the blasphemy law has come to be equated with blasphemy itself. Mumtaz Qadri, whose job was to secure Salmaan Taseer, chose to kill him instead and confessed that the murder was premeditated. One understands what Taseer was trying to do and what Qadri did. But what is it that former justices Sharif and Akhtar along with hundreds of lawyers are trying to do? Are they saying that it is OK to murder someone who in your subjective opinion doesn't have the right amount of reverence for the Prophet? Or that taking human life is justified so long as it is claimed to have been done out of love for the Prophet? |
| Posted by:Fred |