The exchange of Pakistani and Indian prisoners at the Wagah border on Tuesday highlighted an enduring humanitarian issue between the two countries. The Pakistani authorities handed over 36 men to the other side and received 19 of our own nationals, including a family of ten - six small children and three women.
They suffered a long year of imprisonment under hostile and harsh conditions for having committed visa violations due to ignorance of legal necessities or insufficient visa facilities, or simply for having made unlucky mistakes.
These people, of course, are not the only ones to have undergone punishments vastly disproportionate to their respective offences; it is also common for the two sides to arrest and imprison fishermen, many of them teen-aged boys, for having strayed into the other country's territorial waters.
Which is an irrationally high cost that some unfortunate people in both countries have to pay for the politics of conflict.
The Indian official accompanying the Pakistani nationals said that "the prisoners being exchanged have completed their prison terms." That, however, happens to be a gross misstatement.
For many of those who returned to their respective countries on Wednesday were charged with minor offences of visa overstay and illegal border crossing. Under the international law and practices, they should not have had to spend more than a few months in prison.
In fact, the courts in either country do not sentence such offenders to more than a few months of jail term. But given the nature of relations between the two countries, on the completion of the sentence, they find themselves being accused of spying and hence kept languishing in jails for years.
This at least is the story of a 52-year old Pakistani who returned home on Wednesday. According to him, he had mistakenly crossed the border, and was awarded only a three-month sentence by an Indian court, but he ended up spending 20 long years in different prisons of that country.
Even if this story is not the whole truth, it reflects an unforgivable apathy both on the part of our High Commission staff in New Delhi and the human rights organisations in Pakistan as well as India.
Now that the two sides are engaged in adopting various confidence-building measures they must also address the plight of their nationals who end up in prisons due to harmless negligence or circumstances beyond their control.
It is not only Pakistani and Indian nationals who go through unspeakable suffering in hostile settings. There is another category of people, Bangladeshis, who try to make their way to Pakistan through illegal travel across India in search of greener pastures.
Some of them too are caught and thrown in Indian jails for unending duration's. The governments of the three countries must examine the issue logically and adopt measures in accordance with international practices to deal with illegal aliens.
In the case of Pakistani and Indian prisoners hauled up for visa overstay or illegal border crossings it makes no sense to keep these people in jails for inordinately long periods. If the intention is to cause political hurt to the other side, so far the method has failed to achieve the desired effect.
Sadly but surely no one in Islamabad or Delhi loses sleep over the plight of these people. For those who get caught and imprisoned in either country invariably belong to the under-privileged classes.
The best way to deal with the problem, from the humanitarian as well as governmental perspective, therefore, is to follow the civilised international practice in the case of unwanted aliens, and send all such visitors back to their home countries.
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