Pakistan’s
Political Crisis and Human Rights Record
Delivered at New York
A
lecture organized by US Committee for Human Rights
May
30, 1999
2.
I address you at a difficult time in our country, Pakistan’s,
history. A time when our country is facing external and internal
threats which are a source of anguish and concern for all patriotic
citizens.
3.
This weeks flare up in the Kashmir sector at Kargill has
demonstrated once again how fragile a thread maintains the peace in a
volatile part of the world. Our region South Asia has become one of
the global tinderboxes, which can explode at any moment.
4.
We have seen how quickly the euphoria built around the Lahore
Declaration signed this Spring evaporated as Kashmiri freedom fighters
took advantage of melting snows to cross over into Indian occupied
Kashmir and take over the trenches built by Indian troops. Helicopter
gunships and MIG fighter planes have already been used—and some
downed.
5.
Such a flare-up in a region, which has just demonstrated
awesome power through weapons of mass destruction can only increase
instability as it, threatens peace.
6.
It is a time when all sane voices will call upon the leadership
of the two newly acquired nuclear powers to keep the rhetoric down and
work quickly to defuse a tension which can accidentally blow out of
hand into a holocaust. India and Pakistan need to learn to manage
disputes, a task which unfortunately has evaded us for the last fifty
years.
7.
The last fifty years of the history of the Sub-Continent bear
mute testimony to the havoc that the unresolved Dispute over Jammu and
Kashmir has wrought in our region. Recall the Kashmiri uprising which
engulfed the two newborn Nations, the Rann of Katch Dispute, the
September War and finally the armed invasion which led to the breakup
of Pakistan.
8.
The Simla Agreement negotiated between Prime Ministers Zulfikar
Ali Bhutto and Indira Gandhi in 1972 has given the region the longest
lasting peace. Yet this has been a fragile peace. A peace which has
come near to breaking down several times in the last thirty years. A
peace, which has been narrowly sustained at the cost of diverting
billions of rupees by both countries from poverty alleviation programs
into military arsenals. Ironically, the break-up of Pakistan saw both
India and Pakistan go in for larger and bigger armies than the ones
they had in 1971. The military buildup has been accompanied by a
dangerous proliferation race, which threatens the South Asian region.
9.
The Indian Nuclear detonation in 1974 was followed by
Pakistan’s efforts to meet the threat by acquiring nuclear
technology. The Indian decision to build missiles capable of carrying
nuclear warheads was met with Pakistan’s decision to build nuclear
warheads, which could target Indian cities.
10.
The Pakistan Peoples Party is committed to Non-Proliferation.
If we have followed the proliferation path, we have followed it not
because we believe in proliferation but because we saw no other way to
defend the security and territorial integrity of Pakistan.
Quaid-e-Awam had to acknowledge the Indian nuclear program by building
one for Pakistan. The Pakistan Peoples Party did not want Pakistan to
put together a nuclear device unless Pakistan’s security was at
stake. That PPP doctrine adopted in 1989 held force until May1997 when
India detonated devices and the Pakistani leadership, believing
Pakistani security to be at risk, held a series of detonations.
11.
As far as missiles were concerned, the Missile doctrine adopted
by the Peoples Government was two fold. First to alert the world
community to help build a zero-missile regime in the region and
prevent a missile race. Second, while working for a zero missile
regime in South Asia, to establish a Missile Technology Board to
respond to the threat posed to every major Pakistani city except
Quetta by nuclear capable missiles in India which could hit us with
only 5 minutes warning time.
12.
It was a tragic day for South Asia when the proliferation line
was crossed in May 1998. One had hoped that the two Nations could have
worked out a South Asia free of Nuclear Weapons with a Zero Missile
regime. It was not to be.
13.
When India decided to test fire its medium range missile this
April, the Pakistan peoples party called upon the regime not to
copycat India with a Photostat response. The Missiles capable of
carrying nuclear warheads had been developed by the Pakistan Peoples
Party Government in the event of an attack on Pakistan. In the absence
of an attack on Pakistan, there was no need for Pakistan to have test
fired in a show of bravado. Had Pakistan restrained from responding to
India’s action, Pakistan could have taken the high moral ground
secure in the knowledge of it own strength. India would have been
roundly condemned by the world community.
14.
In fact, since the Indian detonations on May 11, 1998, the
Pakistan peoples Party has been calling for a revision of Pakistan’s
foreign policy of the last fifty years. All the arms we could acquire,
including the weapons of mass destruction, have not stopped war,
conflict, tension, and flare-ups in the region.
15.
The Pakistan peoples Party has called upon Pakistan to identify
its core security. Pakistan must have the wisdom to delink itself from
Indian foreign policy if it is to avoid what the Americans did to the
former Soviet Union. The Cold War came to an end because the United
States kept upping the ante, the Soviet Union kept responding until
the day came when the economy of the Soviet Union could no longer
sustain or maintain the system. The Soviet Union then collapsed and
disintegrated.
16.
It is valuable to recall that the former Soviet Union was up to
its brow in nuclear weapons, missiles and all sorts of armaments.
However, it did not have wheat to feed its people. Security as we head
towards the twenty-first century is based less on the might of
militaries and more on the might of markets. This is the lesson that
the end of the Cold War has left. Either Nations will adopt the
lessons or they will make the mistakes and Pay the price.
17.
The Pakistan peoples Party has called upon Pakistan to sign the
CTBT without waiting for India to do so. Our security is enhanced, not
diminished, by our delinking with India, taking the high moral ground
and taking a route which the international community would wish to
reward, a reward which could help the starving masses of Pakistan.
18.
It is also time for Pakistani leaders to look beyond their own
partisan political interests to the larger national issues and the
welfare of the common man. It was in that spirit that following the
Indian missile tests that the PPP called upon the regime not to follow
suit.
19.
As we look around us to see how Nations progress, we see that
the ones, which have moved forward, are the ones that have
concentrated on the economies of scale. America, Europe and the more
prosperous East Asian states have all moved in the direction of larger
economic entities recognizing the wisdom of the economies of scale.
This is a world very different than the one at the end of World War
two when the big three gathered at Yalta and with their pens redrew
the map of the world. This is a world that has been dramatically
changed by the Information Revolution that recognizes no territorial
boundaries. It is a world dominated by the free flow of ideas,
information, technology, finance, commerce, and communication. If we
are to take our people out of the squalor of poverty and backwardness,
this is the world we need to join.
20.
But how can we build a free economic zone on the pattern of
NAFTA, ASEAN, APEC or the European Community if we insist on scaring
investors away with proliferation races, disputes which threaten peace
and stability and lawlessness which leads to insecurity.
21.
We need to appreciate that the tactics of the last fifty years
have failed. New thoughts and ideas are necessary without compromising
on principles. We need also to appreciate that much of our Budget
during the Cold War was underwritten by billions of dollars of foreign
aid. That foreign aid has now dried up. The money for sustaining those
policies is no longer there.
22.
The Pakistan Peoples Party believes that Pakistan and India can
learn much from the peaceful models of change which the Middle East
process has thrown up. Specifically, our two countries can learn from
the example of Jordan and Israel. Both these countries have opened up
their border to allow for the free flow of people.
23.
Pakistan and India can follow this example. Without prejudice
to the position of both the parties and without prejudice to the
United Nations Security Council Resolutions, both countries could open
up the line of control, allowing people from Muzzafarabad and Srinigar
to move freely y back and forth. Of course this would have to be
accompanied by India withdrawing its army of occupation from Srinagar
and Pakistan monitoring its area to prevent insurgents from crossing
the border.
24.
It is naïve for India to believe that Pakistan, which has
tremendous sympathy for the Kashmir people, would police the border
for India without relief for the Kashmir people. It is incorrect to
think that Pakistan is sending the insurgents. It is more correct to
believe that many who fought for freedom in the Afghan Jihad have
found a new cause to fight for in Kashmir. With sympathy for the
Kashmir people high, many Pakistanis are only too happy to turn a
blind eye as to what happens at the border when young men and women
risk their lives to cross over.
25.
However, if the external threat is worrying, the internal
situation is of as much concern. The human rights record of the
present regime is one which has shaken the Pakistani people as a
whole.
26.
It is almost as if time had reversed itself. Pakistan has in
many ways gone back into the past.
27.
Now, as then, we see an attempt to concentrate all power in the
hands of one man.
28.
Now, as then, we see political institutions being
systematically dismantled and destroyed.
29.
Now, as then, we see political opponents shamelessly hounded
and persecuted.
30.
Now, as then, we see journalists who dare to print the truth
made targets of violence.
31.
Now, as then, we see the harassment of organized labor and
government employees.
32.
We see Pakistan isolated in the international community.
33.
We see the business community intimidated from investing in a
lawless regime that freezes foreign currency accounts protected by
constitutional guarantees.
34.
We see a regime which bars ordinary Pakistanis from
repatriating their hard earned income while it itself opens banks
after hours to illicitly remove millions of dollars and sacks the
intelligence chief who protests.
35.
We see fear and raw force ruling Pakistan like an iron fist.
36.
Then it was General Zia ul-Haq.
37.
Now, it is Nawaz Sharif, his political heir.
38.
But fascism is fascism.
39.
As it is said, “If one does not learn from the lessons of
history, one repeats its mistakes.”
40.
Ladies and gentlemen,
41.
Unless the nightmare engulfing civil society in Pakistan is
ended, our people will have no hope, no opportunities, and no future.
42.
This is a regime of fascists bent on destroying all democratic
checks and balances which has orchestrated a campaign as Yahya did
against Mujib, Zia did against Zulfikar Ali Bhutto to destroy a
political leadership and with it the aspirations of the people who
look towards it.
43.
The witch-hunt against the Opposition is just one link in an
ugly chain of events against institutions upon which freedom is built.
44.
This is about destroying democracy in the name of corruption.
This is about eliminating the leadership of the Pakistan Peoples Party
through an abuse of the judicial system. Then it was murder, now it is
commissions. Then it was a physical death. Now it is a political
death. But the aim is the same, although it is an aim that strikes at
the very heart of the federal principle.
45.
In cases like these, leaders of one federating unit are taken
to be tried in another federating unit as though the judicial
institutions of their home provinces cannot be trusted. At such times,
the lower trial court avenue is denied, the trial is restricted,
judges adversely affected by governmental decisions insist on hearing
the case, despite a vote of no confidence in them by the defendants.
46.
The resources of the state
-- the police, the Courts, the state controlled press, secret
service expenditure of millions of dollars, is used along with torture
and intimidation of government servants to procure perjured statements
and obstruct the course of justice.
47.
The intent of the regime is clear. Destroy the Opposition and
with it a credible national alternative so that the forces of
oppression, repression and misrule can continue their reign
uninterrupted for the next twenty years. Their model is Indonesia’s
Soharto. A state, whose political fortunes are to be subordinated to
the rapacious financial greed of a family which, along with its
cronies, has already cornered the Textile, Sugar, Bank, Cement, and
edible oil business in Pakistan. The power projects are the only main
area where the multinationals, and not the Mafia, have control. Hence,
the multinationals have also been made the target of the Mafia, which
wants to control the commanding heights of Pakistan’s economy.
48.
There is method in this madness. The aim is to control all
political and economic power and sanctify it by exploiting religious
sentiment. It is a repetition of what earlier occurred in Sudan and in
Afghanistan where power and finance are controlled by a cartel, the
people suffer in poverty and are kept cowed down through the brute
force of repression. This is not the future we wish to bequeath to our
youth and to our future generations.
49.
We have to choose. The time has come. We have to choose e
between the forces of the past and the forces of the future. Between
those who would impose a theocracy and those who would modernize,
between those who would isolate and those who would globalize, between
those who would close down the country and those who would open it up
to the outside world.
50.
A regime born in intrigue and apprenticed in a military
dictatorship lacks the vision to steer the country in the direction of
progress as we head towards the twenty-first century. This was an
intrigue between President Leghari and Mr.Nawaz Sharif to overthrow
the modernising force of the democratically elected Pakistan Peoples
Party Government which had pioneered Pakistan into the world of
deregulation and decentrsalisation of financial institution to give
the common man a hope of a better life. It was not only to overthrow
the Pakistan peoples Party but also to knock out with it the policies
of globalisation through which the PPP sought to create employment and
opportunity for the hardworking people of Pakistan. The PPP was
replaced with a prejudiced interim government with the mission to hold
biased, prejudiced, partial election through rigging and fraud.
51.
The law of the land was changed to enable Nawaz Sharif and his
brother to contest, as defaulters were not eligible to run for
Parliament. The Law Minister, Justice Fakhruddin, resigned in protest
when the law was changed. Another law was passed in the name of
accountability to hound the prominent leaders of the PPP during the
elections. No cases were brought against the PML. Bureaucrats,
Bankers, Businessmen, Diplomats were all arrested by the Leghari-Nawaz
combine, tortured and asked to commit perjury to promote the agenda of
confusing the people of Pakistan about their genuine elected
representatives. The state controlled television was full of were
lurid stories drummed up by propaganda war experts. The murder of the
Prime Minister’s brother was exploited to falsely blame the Prime
Minister’s husband with a view to confuse and dishearten PPP
workers.
52.
Yet the PPP heroically fought on, refusing to boycott an
election so blatantly biased because it believed that a boycott would
lead to the interruption of the democratic process and play into the
hands of religious extremists.
53.
During the elections, the PPP disclosed that computers had been
bought and installed to rig the election results by hacking into the
computer of the election commission of Pakistan. Reports that one
Khayyam Kaiser masterminded this hacking need investigation. At any
rate, two different sets of electoral lists were distributed. The
results did not come in after voting closed at 4.00 p.m. on the
pretext that the polling staff were busy with Iftari and then with
Tarravi prayers. The
results were still being counted twenty-four hours later after polls
closed. That is how Nawaz Sharif got a majority bigger than Quaid e
Azam.
54.
The Pakistani people knew that 1997 was another farce on the
pattern of 1990. So they boycotted the elections. The turnout
according to international observers was only 18 %. That means 82 %
boycotted the election. The Supreme Court of Pakistan is presently
seized with a petition where the Inter Services Intelligence has
admitted that it was ordered to pay millions of dollars worth of
campaign funds to anti-PPP candidates to keep the PPP out of the
elections of 1990. I am sure the day will come when others will come
forward to testify as to how the elections of 1997 were rigged.
55.
Having won a fraudulent mandate, Mr. Nawaz Sharif began his
term driven by insecurity, paranoia and the politics of revenge. He
was more concerned with cornering the different levers of power than
with governing the nation. He and his supporters drew up a plan to
impose a theocracy in Pakistan by exploiting the name of religion.
They decided that the threat to their rule could come from the
following quarters: first, the Pakistan Peoples Party leadership,
second, the Armed Forces, third the Judiciary, fourth the Presidency,
fifth the free Press.
Ladies
and gentlemen,
56.
The assault Nawaz Sharif launched on the institutions of
democracy in Pakistan over the last two and half years is a
calculated, methodological manipulation of every office, of every
force, of every value of pluralism in Pakistan.
57.
Look at the record.
58.
Nawaz Sharif brought down an elected President and substituted
a puppet of his own choosing.
59.
A Man whose nomination the Chief Election Commissioner had
rejected for committing contempt of court.
60.
The judge who would later sentence the Leader of Opposition
overruled the Chief Election Commissioner and allowed Tarrar to
contest the elections. The Chief Election Commissioner lost his job
for doing his duty as Nawaz Sharif then went on to sack him.
61.
The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Pakistan and other
honourable Judges of the apex court were hearing a corruption case
against the Prime Minister. They were attacked and had to flee the
courtroom. The mob that attacked the Supreme Court of Pakistan was
shown on the television, including Federal ministers. After the Judges
fled, the mob leaders were garlanded with roses.
62.
The military did not escape unscathed either. Jehangir Karamat
the Chief of Army Staff who had bailed out Nawaz Sharif at the time of
the conflict with Farooq Leghari was unceremoniously sacked despite
the demoralizing Affect it had on the Armed Forces for displeasing the
rulers with a speech he gave at a Naval function. The Navy and Air
Force chiefs were not spared either. Stories of corruption about them
were leaked to the press demoralizing their forces through a media
trial.
63.
The Opposition was physically assaulted with members suffering
injuries. Nawaz Sharif ordered brick, batten and other attacks by the
police against parliamentarians --
including myself.
64.
Nawaz Sharif created under a special law an Ehtesab Bureau of
so-called political accountability as a mechanism of victimization
against the opposition.
65.
Nawaz Sharif is a man of no constraints, no limits, no laws.
66.
Ladies and gentlemen, I do not fear justice, I welcome it.
67.
The charges against me are concocted.
I want you, my Pakistani compatriots, to know that I served
you, with my Party, to the best of our abilities. I may have made
mistakes during my tenure as Prime Minister and there are things that
I would choose to do differently. But it is important to learn from
the past to reach out to the future.
68.
I come here to affirm to you that the Pakistan peoples Party is
true to its roots as a modernizing force seeking to emancipate the
people of Pakistan. We believe in freedom and have always fought for
freedom. We believe that government needs to shrink, concentrating on
social obligations. It is not the job of the state to tell people how
they should worship, what sect they should belong to, what cultural
ceremonies they should observe. People must be free, free to Be
Muslims, Christians, Hindus as long as they are good Pakistanis. Our
people must be free, free to be Sunnis and Shias as long as they are
good Pakistanis. Our people must be free to be Pathans, Punjabis,
Muhajirs, Baloch, Sindhis, and Kashmiri’s as long as they are good
Pakistanis.
69.
Religious violence and intolerance has crept into our body
politic because the state has taken on much of what ought to be in the
individual’s DOMAIN. It has created divisiveness, sectarianism,
persecution of minorities and it has made us fearful and ashamed. We
cannot be proud when worshippers at a gravesite are shot dead or when
armed police guards Mosques on the sacred occasion of Eid. But we need
to go beyond fear and shame. We need to overcome the social barriers
that extremists seek to erect, we need to define the responsibilities
of the state and we need to define the responsibilities of the
individual.
70.
It cannot make us proud when we read that every twelve hours,
one Pakistani kills himself because he cannot afford to live. The
plight of the common man cannot make us proud. Our Fathers cannot keep
their jobs; our sons cannot find jobs; our traders cannot trade, our
sisters find it hard to shop and feed their children. Nearly two
thirds of our people cannot use the pen whilst in other parts of the
world the pen is being discarded for the computer. We need schools, we
need hospitals, we need health care, and above all we need hope that
we can have a better future. It is time for us to come together as a
Nation, to heal ourselves, to bind the wounds that fester, to review
policies both internal and external which have failed in the last half
century, failed to give us peace, progress or justice.
71.
We need democracy and development, not fascism and fear.
72.
Fascism is a tough word. But
again, let’s look at the PML record.
73.
It has refused to condemn murderers of women committed in the
name of honour. It has refused, despite a constitutional majority, to
restore women’s seats to Parliament.
74.
It has suspended the elected Assembly in our country’s second
largest province and established military courts for summary trials.
75.
It has hanged people after summary trials, has engaged in state
terrorism assaulted the position of minorities in society, and all but
decimated the free press.
76.
No constraints. No
limits. No laws.
77.
Newspaper editors have been kidnapped, tortured and detained.
Najam Sethi, the distinguished editor of the independent Friday
Times, was arrested by the
police, literally dragged from his bed in the middle of the night,
physically tortured, mentally abused, not permitted to see his family
or lawyers.
78.
Columnists critical of the regime have been beaten and had
their bones broken like the former Pakistani Ambassador to Sri Lanka,
Hussain Haqqani.
79.
The military has been dispatched to collect water bills and
check electricity meters, sending a clear signal to the people about
the breakdown of a civil society.
80.
After next February, when he will pack fully one-third of the
Senate with his handpicked cronies, Nawaz Sharif and the PML will have
every card in the deck.
81.
They will not only control every institution of power and
politics, every element of the media and the military, but will have
the ability to amend the Constitution at will.
And then the dictatorship will be complete.
82.
Victor Hugo once said that
“a stand can be made against invasion of an army, but no
stand can be made by an invasion of an idea.”
83.
The power of democracy, the force of free political parties,
the vitality of a strong press, the contribution of functioning NGOs,
the integrity of an independent Judiciary, the inevitability of the
rights of women in modern society
-- all of these forces are more powerful than the PML’s
tyranny.
84.
These are the forces of history, and they cannot be denied, and
they cannot be defeated.
85.
When the Pakistan peoples Party took over in 1988, Pakistanis
could not get a telephone without waiting for twenty years. They could
not get electricity with power shut downs lasting thirteen hours. We
wondered how the enterprising Pakistani people could set up their own
trades and businesses, help create jobs and develop the economy
without such essentials. So we decided to introduce the
telecommunications revolution bringing in optic fiber, cellular
telephones, fax machines, Internet, e-mail and satellite dishes. We
see ourselves as a modernising force. And I am here to re-affirm to
you the commitment of the Pakistan Peoples Party to the forces of
liberalism, progress, modernism and freedom.
86.
For the future, we need the support of our compatriots for a
constitutional majority as the crisis Pakistan faces is less a crisis
of governance and more a crisis of state. We need a constitutional
majority to have a real first chance to reform the state apparatus, to
depoliticise institutions, to devolve power to the provinces and the
local councils so that communities can govern themselves. We need
effective government, not big government. We need reforms to end the
electoral apartheid against the minorities. Reforms for an independent
Election Commission and a non-partisan anti-corruption Ombudsman to
check corruption. Reforms bringing the women into Parliament and
introducing a partial list system so that the people of Pakistan are
no longer hostage to the forces of patriarchy, feudalism, tribalism in
a Parliament dominated by the Urban rich and the Rural rich. And we
need a new foreign policy, a progressive foreign policy that enables
Pakistan to become a proud partner in global values in an increasingly
global world. Many of these reforms need a constitutional majority.
87.
The Pakistan Peoples Party has a vision for Pakistanis as we
prepare ourselves to enter a new century, A NEW millennium. A vision
based on a South Asian Free Trade Zone providing South Asia with the
economies of scale and providing the people of the region employment,
opportunity and progress. Such an Asian free trade zone can mobilize
the huge economic force and markets of South Asia to compete
effectively in the emerging global marketplace; a marketplace based on
regional alliances.
88.
As we work for open trading borders in South Asia, open to
trade, to commerce, to finance, to people to people contact, I hope we
can build the climate to resolve the explosive tinderbox of Kashmir
with the blessings of the All Parties Hurriyet Conference. And of
course we need to build a South Asia that can limit the spread of
nuclear weapons by creating a nuclear and missile free zone on the
sub-continent.
89.
These are the issues of the twenty-first century that must be
confronted. These are the
issues of a modern Pakistan. These
are the issues of the third millennium that is but 216 days away.
90.
And on that last night of the last century of the last
millennium as we look out at the stars shining brightly above the
world, I hope they remind us that some dreams cannot die, that life
has a meaning when humans look beyond themselves into the eyes of the
teeming masses and make a commitment. A commitment beyond the material
to lead a meaningful life by standing up for an ideal, by striking out
against injustice and by so doing sending” forth a tiny ripple of
hope, and daring those ripples to build a current which can sweep down
the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.”
Thank you.
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