EDITORIAL: The annual report of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) on the State of Human Rights in 2023 shows, yet again, that the law-and-order situation in Sindh continues to deteriorate despite tall claims by the government. All sorts of problems that have plagued the province for the longest time, from street crime to kidnappings to “enforced disappearances of political workers, nationalists, lawyers and journalists”, have worsened.
Yet, as so many stakeholders and onlookers have warned for so long, this is exactly what you get when the political elite falls all over itself to snatch power and control law enforcement agencies for its own purposes. Now, it’s not just the number of typical criminal cases like theft, murder, child abuse, etc., that is rising, it is also curbs on people’s social, political and constitutional freedoms.
HRCP is worried, along with the rest of civil society, that 2,299 cases of enforced disappearances remain unresolved. The crackdown following the May 9 riots has been and is being allegedly used to carry out arbitrary arrests and detentions of people to score personal and political scores. And “violence against women and children remained a persistent issue with 546 cases of child abuse reported in Sindh during the year”. The Commission also points out, as always, that such cases are severely under-reported and even these numbers do not come close to reflecting the real state of decay.
Also, it’s no surprise that HRCP drew a parallel between shrinking space for civilians and “new restrictions” on media freedom. Popular narratives are being checked, journalists and anchor-persons have been harassed, picked up, and in some cases even found dead under not-so-mysterious circumstances. Media outlets themselves are pressured not to broadcast information on missing journalists. And internet blockage has become very frequent – at least 15 times last year – which restricts access to information and counts as a violation of a fundamental human right.
On top of all this, nobody has even started to seriously look into rapidly rising religious intolerance. 41 people, including two women, were accused of blasphemy last year. Two non-Muslim places of worship were attacked while one temple was hit with rocket launchers “while the police who were nearby did nothing”. Cases of forced migration and kidnappings of Hindu community members are also rising, causing an “alarming situation” that authorities need to address urgently.
This is not the first such report card of the Sindh government, of course, and there’s nothing to suggest that the ones to follow will be any better. Long years of declining social indicators are proof enough that human rights do not feature too high on its priority list. But things have now reached a breaking point. Let’s not forget that the deteriorating decline in social indicators now goes hand in hand with an unprecedented economic collapse. And with people losing their rights, lives and livelihoods, the government might just have more unrest to deal with than it would have calculated. Unless, of course, it wakes up and starts taking care of the people, especially their most basic rights.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2024