http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_30-11-2003_pg3_2
Daily Times, Pakistan
Sunday, November 30, 2003
Pakistan's Human Rights Obligations
By Ishtiaq Ahmed
Ishtiaq.Ahmed@statsvet.su.se
[The author is an associate professor of Political Science at
Stockholm University. He is the author of two books]
...... While Convention on the Elimination of all forms of
Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) emphatically states that all
grown up men and women can freely choose their spouse, Pakistan has
made a reservation on this matter stating that Islamic law does not
allow Muslim women to marry non-Muslims. .....
...... Pakistan aspires to remain a modernising Islamic democracy with
a commitment to democratic freedoms of sorts and, on the other, the
theocratic tendency co-opted into constitutional and legal provisions
by successive governments requires a manifest adherence to Islamic law
which is not always consistent with UN standards.
It has not been easy to walk this tight rope between two conflicting
movements, but the dogmatic Islamic current has gained ground over
time. Historically, governments have found it expedient to take
recourse to Islamic rhetoric in the hope of gaining popularity and
legitimacy. Innocuous as it might sound, each such step has meant an
incremental increase in dogmatic official discourse with direct
implications for the constitution and legal systems of Pakistan.
Thus on March 7, 1949 Prime Minister Liaqat Ali Khan moved an
Objectives Resolution in the Pakistan Constituent Assembly. It
declared God as the sovereign, not the people or their elected
representatives. The first constitution of Pakistan adopted in 1956
declared Pakistan an Islamic Republic and made a commitment to
bringing all laws in conformity with Islam. The second constitution,
given in 1962 by General Ayub Khan, initially dropped the word
‘Islamic'; Pakistan was simply declared the Republic of Pakistan.
Mainstream politicians and the ulema assailed this omission
vociferously. The first amendment restored ‘Islamic' to the
description of Pakistan.
The first directly elected National Assembly of Pakistan, led by the
charismatic Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, adopted the third constitution in
1973. It not only declared Pakistan an Islamic Republic, but also
required the prime minister to be a Muslim. The first two
constitutions had only made it mandatory for the president of the
republic to be a Muslim. Hence, the third one went further than
previous constitutions by declaring that both the president and the
prime minister should take an oath that declared that they believed in
the finality of Prophet Muhammad's (PBUH) prophetic mission.
When General Muhammad Ziaul Haq captured the reigns of power in 1977,
a long tradition of relying on Islam to define national identity and
the rights of citizens was already in place, although the fundamental
rights of Pakistani citizens had continued to be defined in general
liberal terms and only symbolic restrictions had been imposed on
non-Muslims, disqualifying them from contesting the highest offices in
the state.
Zia, however, wanted to establish an Islamic state in a substantial
and not merely a symbolic manner. He declared ‘I have a mission, given
by God, to bring Islamic order to Pakistan'. He visualised a social
order in which all sectors of life, including administration,
judiciary, banking, trade, education, agriculture, industry and
foreign affairs, were regulated in accordance with Islamic law and
precepts. Thereafter, followed the Islamisation process. Women,
non-Muslims and minor sects were the direct victims of such reforms.
The Blasphemy Law, the Law of Evidence, Hudud punishments and several
other edicts upheld by the Pakistani judicial system are in direct
contravention of the human rights commitment that the Government of
Pakistan has made to the international community.
General Zia perished in a plane crash in August 1988. However, the
elected governments of Benazir Bhutto (1988-90; 1993-96) and Nawaz
Sharif (1990-93; 1997-99) refrained from challenging the
fundamentalist laws adopted during the Zia regime. General Pervez
Musharraf (in power since 12 October 1999) initially took a
progressive position vis-à-vis Islam and expressed admiration for the
Turkish arch-moderniser Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. He subsequently
retreated from this position in the face of hue and cry from the
Islamists.
It seems that once the origin or basis of a law or a rule is claimed
to be Islamic, governments and political leaders dare not repeal them.
The political costs of defying such a stricture are too high and most
of the time governments simply do not act, or act inconsistently.
Thus signing or ratifying international human rights treaties remains
virtually a symbolic act and many treaties even when signed can be
ignored with impunity. Despite all the media attention, human rights
remain peripheral to the actual politics of our times. The struggle
for human rights is therefore an uphill task, but the struggle to
emancipate human beings from all forms of oppression must go on.
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