Category Archives: Law & Order

Who suffers more?

Children and Youth, Development and Poverty, Education, Law & Order, War and Peace

By Zubeida Mustafa

ANALYSING the anatomy of violence in Karachi, Kaiser Bengali, a former adviser to the Sindh chief minister, wrote in this paper (Sept 8) about the breakdown of the social contract in the city.

He defines this as the essential, implicit agreement between all interest groups on the broad contours of governance. On the basis of this, all societies function, he writes.

Kaiser Bengali is spot on. He lists demographic changes, joblessness of the Lyari youth and the rise of religious militancy as the major battlefronts of the war resulting from the end of the social contract. Continue reading Who suffers more? →

We don’t need the noose

Justice, Law & Order, Terrorism and Violence

By Zubeida Mustafa

PAKISTAN’S leadership is in a dilemma. Should it continue the moratorium on the execution of prisoners on death row that the PPP government had enforced since June 2008?

Soon after assuming office in June, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was inclined to revive capital punishment presumably to demonstrate his commitment to fighting terrorism in the country. He naively believes that hanging criminals reduces crime.

He is now wavering. Has the outcry from human rights bodies and anti-death penalty activists shaken his resolve? Or did he change his mind when the Taliban threatened a bloodbath if two members of the Lashkar-i-Jhangvi in Sukkur jail were hanged, as scheduled, in August? Continue reading We don’t need the noose →

Weapons and information

Constitution, Defence and Disarmament, Human Rights, Information, Justice, Law & Order, Terrorism and Violence, War and Peace

By Zubeida Mustafa

IT is exactly 12 weeks to the day when Perween Rahman, director of the Orangi Pilot Project (OPP) Research and Training Institute, was gunned down in Orangi when she was returning home from work.

Two months later, another activist of the OPP who ran a school, Abdul Wahid Khan, was killed outside his home. A few days later on May 18, Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaaf leader Zahra Shahid Husain was assassinated by armed men.

These were not the only people who were victims of target killing in Karachi. Approximately 259 other people met a violent death in the city in the same period. We mourn them all. Above all, we mourn our own helplessness to save these precious lives.

Zohra Yusuf, the chairperson of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, was spot on when she once commented that in Karachi a person championing a human rights cause, who dies a natural death, is indeed lucky. Continue reading Weapons and information →

How the laws treat the second half

Archive Edition, Human Rights, Islamisation, Law & Order, Women

By Zubeida Mustafa

The role of legislation in the emancipation and empowerment of women has been the subject of much debate in discourses on women’s rights. Can laws reform the status of women when society is not prepared to introduce changes? In other words can transformation in the condition of women in a society be brought about through law making rather than the social process? Continue reading How the laws treat the second half →