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Pak human rights panel indicts Sharief govt on all counts

The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan has accused the Nawaz Sharief government of encouraging fundamentalism in the country by its words and actions.

The HRCP report for 1997 notes that the year saw the largest number of sectarian killings (more than 200), but the government dragged its feet on its promise to clamp down on madarsas that peach sectarian hatred.

The report accuses the government of playing to the fundamentalist gallery by such steps as echoing denunciation of 'immorality' in society and the media, ''reiterating support for the adoption of the (conservatively interpreted) Shariat law, agreeing to abolish interest, ruling out any initiative against the religious schools believed to be nurseries of sectarian terrorism, and not even recognising any need for an initiative in the direction of women's rights and against rampant discrimination against them.''

The report says the country has 5,500 religious seminaries, a large number of which impart military training. Of them, 700 are foreign-funded. Their role in sectarian bloodshed, mainly in Punjab, is no secret but the government does not want to take action against them, its promises notwithstanding.

In the meantime, women and minorities suffer indignities and insecurity. Rape continued to be the top crime against women all through 1997 when a woman was raped every three hours. Trafficking in women has become such a lucrative trade that Karachi alone was getting a supply of women at the rate of about 150 a day.

Women's political standing is reflected in the fact that, out of 207 Muslim seats in the National Assembly, they occupy only five. In the 83-seat senate there are only two women. The Sharief government is not yet prepared to restore women's reservation in Parliament despite its promises. Reservations for women in Parliament were discontinued in 1988.

Others who suffer discrimination are minorities and children. The latter, like women, suffer sexual abuse. During the year there were 789 cases of child abuse in Lahore alone, most of the victims being girls. Also, during the year, smuggling of children to Gulf states increased steeply. About 19,000 children were reportedly smuggled to these states.

But the worst scenario that the report presented was that of young educated people yearning for death. It mentions the case of a young person who falsely confessed to having committed a murder because he hoped to go to jail where he would have a meal a day before being hanged. There were about 166 (the government says 88) suicides during the year in Sind because of unemployment and the government's policy of downsizing in offices.

UNI

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