South Asia Citizens Web

The army in Pakistan must stop seeing everything through the prism of competition and war with India. Six decades of this policy has left Pakistan exhausted and indifferent to its own suffering. To prosper, Pakistan needs to go further. It must overcome its hatred for India; and leave Kashmir as a problem to be solved by Kashmiris. Pakistan needs to put all its energies into improving governance and dealing with its myriad internal issues, most particularly ending the Islamist violence and rolling back the fundamentalist political and cultural currents that are overwhelming its society. The military’s role in this effort must be limited to defending the people of Pakistan from violence and to ensuring that their constitutional and civil rights are protected.

Ramesh Agrawal and Dr. Harihar Patel arrested after Jindal Steel and Power co., the biggest corporation in Raigarh district, charged them with defamation during an environmental clearance hearing. The case, two months after the actual hearing, suggested vendetta. Similarly Rohit Prajapati in Gujarat is now facing a defamation case worth millions of rupees for exposing enviromental pollution in Gujarat.

A 70-page report details abuses against convict porters including summary executions, torture, and the use of the convicts as “human shields.” The military should stop forcibly recruiting prisoners as porters and mistreating them, and those responsible for ordering or participating in such treatment should be prosecuted, Human Rights Watch and the Karen Human Rights Group said.

Adopting measures like the Salwa Judum that subvert the constitution and raise violence levels are counter-productive as they result in the forming of illegal militias that over time run amok and cannot be controlled by the state. The creation of illegal militias by the state to fight insurgents is not unique to Chhattisgarh alone and this strategy has used in other insurgency-wracked areas like Jammu and Kashmir or the Northeast. Surrendered militants are armed and sent out to fight alongside the security forces.

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.