I woke up to another flurry of messages of outrage. This is normal in Pakistan. But of course, it is not normal. As much as they throw draconian actions at us through various notifications there will be resistance. The nature of our resistance must change.
This country has become an exhausting unending series of battles between a Praetorian set of state managers and the citizens. Endless legal battles, election frauds, bureaucratic notifications stripping the rights, privacy and everything in between of the struggling tired citizenry. Government of anything but the people.
The latest government notification authorising the intelligence services that from "time to time" (basically whenever), they can bug and invade the privacy of any citizen of Pakistan, is a declaration of formal war against citizens' rights. Under the guise of ‘national security’ there is no right to privacy.
National security of whom? This is a question the state managers refuse to answer to us the citizens of this country.
Our Constitution guarantees privacy, which is an inalienable and fundamental right in Article 14 (1), “The dignity of man and, subject to law, the privacy of home, shall be inviolable.” The first part of the provision confers an absolute protection to human dignity and it is not subject to any limitation.
Even the instrument which controls the airways in Pakistan, the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act, 2016 (PECA) recognises unauthorised disclosure of personal information (by relevant service providers) of any person as an offence.
There is inordinate amount of ‘unauthorised’ actions against Pakistani citizens which has resulted in deaths, abductions, threats, violence, and everything in between for decades now.
Today you have government agencies empowering themselves at the expense of the individual citizen. That is as unconstitutional as it gets
Not once have we seen the public offices, whether parliament, parliamentarians, attorney general’s office etc effectively safeguard the safety of Pakistani citizens. Rather, instead of deepening and ring-fencing individual security, they have deemed it appropriate to isolate, disempower and make the environment even more vulnerable for citizens.
Why is the attorney general’s office not all over this notification? Why didn’t his office advise the prime minister’s office against it? Is it not the job of the AG to protect the rights of the citizens aka public from anyone’s overreach?His office is in aid of who? Their salaries and perks are paid by taxes of the general public and therefore their work should be to defend whose rights and safety?
What is ‘public’ ‘interest’?
For generations now we have seen public officers merely watch the systematic removal of foundational rights of ordinary Pakistani citizens. Public offices, in fact, have become party to the abuse. A cursory review of the positions public office holders has taken vs citizen’s welfare are as follows.
The AG office defends the military establishment’s intelligence agencies in the commissions and legal battles in the cases against them for abducting citizens referred to as “the missing persons” instead of the other way around. Human rights lawyers are left to defend and seek information about the disappeared citizens. Should the burden be finding what has happened to so many citizens left to civil sane lawyers and human rights defenders? Where is parliament and where is the entire public legal & justice system? What bigger threat to our ‘national security’ exists than the disappearance of citizens from their homes inside of Pakistan?
Another case which starkly pits the public against its government is the blocking of the internet, where the public prosecutor defends the agencies who choose to deprive the public during electoral campaigns, elections, post-elections and continues to block higher-speed accessible internet so that communication networks remain sketchy.
In whose interests is it for Pakistanis to remain in silos of information fed propaganda and remain disconnected from one another and the international community? On whose side should the public defence team be on this matter?
The most brazen demonstration of where the government’s loyalties lie is the case of depriving representation of women and non-Muslims in parliament (reserved seats). What the AG office stand on this? In the battles of power, control and rights of the citizens, where should government offices and parliamentarians stand and where are they standing currently?
Today, the public offices no longer represent the citizens, their rights, or their interests; they neither defend them, promote them, advocate for them, but they most definitely live off them.
We the people have seen it tolerated it, out of opportunity cost, fear, laziness etc. but this latest government notification allowing the intelligence agencies to harass citizens is next level legalising persecution.
This cannot be constitutionally supported. What is the constitution, other than a guide to protect the people who make up a nation. The nation is not its government bodies, but the individual citizens.
Today you have government agencies empowering themselves at the expense of the individual citizen. That is as unconstitutional as it gets. A people without a government for the people. That colonialism, occupation and an over reach bordering on treason.
Pakistan has no people’s representatives in parliament nor advocates in government, therefore as citizens of Pakistan we must push back, together.
The sole spokesperson for Pakistan is its civil society/human rights organisations made of individuals with a semblance of a purpose to save this dying society.
It is time for the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) to galvanise both individual advocates and like-minded organised people, to fight the good fight for Pakistan.
This latest notification allowing the security establishment to further threaten citizens under the guise of security should be the tipping point.
How many commissions, reports, on missing persons, banning of communication networks in a country where there is no access reporting or interest in what is happening outside of Islamabad Peshawar Lahore and Karachi. What about the remaining 150 districts of Pakistan? Without appropriate pushback and consequences for those who insist on undermining and weakening citizens' welfare, we have seen them embolden to do more.
Human rights platforms and organisations must step outside of their conference rooms and pulpits, and adopt a more proactive strategy. Since the 1990s the depoliticisation of democratic development in Pakistan has been relegated to projects and the periphery. It is time to pivot.