Agents of the state, as well as the insurgents and extremists operating in the Balochistan province of Pakistan share a common disregard for rights of the citizens.
Agents of the state, as well as the insurgents and extremists operating in the Balochistan province of Pakistan share a common disregard for rights of the citizens.
The history of Pakistan’s modern intelligence agencies goes back to the colonial times. In those days the intelligence services, particularly the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) of the colonial police, were primarily concerned with protecting the British Raj from any threat to its existence and continuity, and the greatest of that threat was perceived to come from the political left.
The Supreme Court order against the Salwa Judum’s vigilantism in Chhattisgarh must be read by all, especially government officials. The details of the civil war in the tribal districts of Chhattisgarh are largely unknown to most readers of this newspaper. For the region is remote and
inaccessible, and easily ignored by the national media. This civil war pits, on the one side, Maoist extremists, and, on the other, a band of vigilantes funded and armed by the state government. These vigilantes, originally promoted by a Congress politician named Mahendra Karma, were then appointed ‘Special Police Officers’ (SPOs) by chief minister Raman Singh, who belongs to the BJP.
We warmly welcome the order by Justice Reddy and Justice Nijjar directing the State of Chhattisgarh to stop using SPOs in counterinsurgency operations, disarm them and stop supporting vigilante movements by any name. We also welcome the order to the Centre directing it to cease from financially supporting SPOs to engage in counterinsurgency.
Judging from the personal reactions we have had – from a very wide variety of people many of whom we do not even know – the order has been widely hailed as a landmark restatement of constitutional values. If the state is to be recognised as legitimate it must act lawfully and cannot sacrifice the law and Constitution for immediate expediency.
We are a group of highly qualified mental health professionals who are practicing as psychiatrists, clinical psychologists and behavioural psychologists from across the country. We regret the statement made by Union Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad on Monday where he called homosexuality a “disease†, as being “unnatural†, and a having “come from western shores†. Scientific evidence shows that homosexuality is a natural variant of human sexuality and is not a mental disorder or disease.
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