Fata and parts of Balochistan have become "black holes" and honest answers must be given to questions about internment centres which have turned into "Guantanamo Bay-like prisons". This was stated by Senator Farhatullah Babar at an event organized by the National Commission for Human Rights at the International Islamic University in Islamabad Tuesday to commemorate the human right day, said a press release.
To retain respect and support the NCHR must be independent of the executive and also allowed to raise funds on its own, he said. The Fata 'black hole' is also linked to the state's Afghan policy which must be revisited as part of the human right agenda, he said.
Freedom of expression is also intertwined with civil-military relations, he said and called for a bipartisan Parliamentary Committee for democratic accountability of foreign and security polices in the "dangerously imbalanced civil-military relations".
The impunity with which violence against media persons and human rights defender is committed must be ended as well as the charade of accusing the NGOs of pursuing foreign agendas without offering any proof. Human rights are threatened by succumbing to rule by the mob as in the recent Faizabad dharna, he said.
"Something profound happened on that day. The state and society surrendered. A dangerous template was created to reject rule of law as guarantor of human rights. Politics of hate and intolerance triumphed over human rights. On that day Pakistan ceased to be the country it was until a few days before. In one brief page of surrender document the discourse on human rights is fundamentally and dangerously altered," he said. One hopes that we will take it as a serious setback and not allow it to become the norm, he added.-PR
Comments
Comments are closed.