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The Rediff Interview/I A Rehman

I A Rehman is director of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan and an organising committee member of the Pakistan Peace Coalition, a national body formed after the Indian and Pakistani nuclear tests of May 1998. Rehman was editor-in-chief of the Pakistan Observer, a daily newspaper. He resigned in the 1970s during the military dictatorship of General Zia-ul-Haq and started an independent newspaper. He later became editor of View Point, an independent weekly published from Lahore.

Rehman is a leading crusader for human rights, a prominent art critic, and a well-known columnist. He is also a founder member of the Pakistan-India Peoples' Forum for Peace and Democracy.

Rehman, who spoke to Mohammad Shehzad in Islamabad about the October 12 general election in Pakistan, pointed out that elections ought not only to be free and fair, but democratic too. Excerpts:

Why is the state of human rights so bad in Pakistan?

For the development and protection of human rights, people's participation in decision-making is vital. Where people have no role in governance, the state of human rights will remain abominable. Also, 'human rights' is not one indicator. Human rights cover a broad range of concerns. Sometimes you may see improvement in one sector and deterioration in another. On the whole, the main issue in Pakistan is, unless the people get due say in running the affairs of the state, the condition of human rights cannot be improved.

Why is it so that whenever you release a report on any issue, it is immediately denied by the government?

The problem is that the government takes our observations as an assault on its status or standing. We are not an opposition party. We are not concerned with who is wielding power. We point out an issue. That issue needs to be understood. But when we say that in some areas of Pakistan people are getting poorer, we are accused of bringing a bad name to the country. So, instead of understanding poverty and its extent, they start defending the status quo.

Similarly, when we raised the question of child labour for instance, the government tried to defend it saying there was no child labour. Therefore, we landed ourselves into a lot of complications. It took them quite a few years to realize that denying the existence of problem was not good. Now they recognize it. And we have lost many years in that process.

Does it not mean that the government and organisations like yours need to have better understanding?

Naturally, there are different points of views in society. We may be wrong. But we have a point to make. Our point of view must be heard and addressed. Understanding does not necessarily mean agreement. Understanding means we respect each other's motive, that we respect each other's sense of responsibility, and do not care who is saying what, but what is being said by somebody.

Just two days before the October 10 polls, you released a detailed report on the accusations of pre-poll rigging. The government rejected it downright. Yesterday [October 17], at the Sustainable Development Policy Institute, you vehemently decried the polling-day rigging and post-poll rigging. That has also been denied. How can the citizens of Pakistan decide who is correct, the HRCP or the state?

Every citizen has the right to demand an explanation for whatever is being said. When we say that before the elections were held, the government manipulated the state of affairs, we give concrete arguments. We give an argument, for instance, when we say that you made the president all powerful and you are moving towards an over-centralised state structure. And an over-centralised state structure violates the principle of federalism. This is an open question. Let the government say an over-centralised state structure does not violate the principle of federalism. Then the people can judge! But they don't say that!

Secondly, so many changes have been made in the constitution. Now the government says they are within the limits prescribed by the supreme court. We maintain that the supreme court too cannot change the constitution, and cannot authorise anyone to change the constitution. So, if you are respectful to the constitution, then you follow the principles.

How difficult is it for a human rights activist to work in a country like Pakistan?

Since this was election time, people were free to move around and see. We also acknowledge where some help is given. For instance, the election commission allowed our volunteers to observe the election and I think this is a good practice. But we must agree on the principles.

At the seminar mentioned earlier, you remarked that General Pervez Musharraf had surpassed his military predecessors in his avarice to cling to power. Don't you think his regime is better than the draconian era of General Zia-ul-Haq, who had arrested you and subjected you to severe mental and physical torture when you were an active journalist in the late 1970s?

This is not the issue. Journalists fared very badly under General Zia-ul-Haq. Each age is different from the other. What was done by General Yahya Khan in 1970 cannot be repeated today. The difference in eras makes comparison almost impossible.

We are looking at the institutional framework. No military ruler before the present one had made so many changes in the institutional framework for the elections as now. Zia-ul-Haq increased the disqualifications. They have now been increased further. We have gone back to the pre-colonial period. Also, the restrictions on the election campaigns were unprecedented. So these are the institutional arrangements that we think were of a far-reaching nature.

This time, the graduation condition --- how could you impose such a condition, which means that you are disfranchising a majority in Pakistan? We maintain that elections should not only be free and fair, but they should also be democratic. We can give you so many examples of dictatorship where elections are free and the turnout is 90 per cent. But they are not democratic. So the democratic basis of the elections was badly undermined this time.

Do you see the victory of the Mutahidda Majlis-e-Amal as engineered? Their claim is that the people have brought them into power.

It will not be fair to say that it was all engineered. Nothing is completely engineered. The religious parties were better. They mobilized themselves better. They have a natural/traditional base in those areas. They seized on public discontent, the change in Afghanistan policy. They were also opposed to the US involvement in Pakistan and Afghanistan. So they raised real issues and they also raised issues of the common people like the soaring cost of living, corruption, etc.

[But] I would like to say that when the government tried to block the other parties, the religious parties were not blocked. In fact, by allowing madrassa (Islamic seminary) degrees to be accepted as a "graduate degree", the government provided an opening to the religious parties.

What impact will their victory have on the working of NGOs, civil society institutions, the peace initiative between India and Pakistan, and human rights issues such as the hudood laws (discriminatory laws against women for crimes such as adultery and fornication), blasphemy laws, rights of minorities, rijam (death by stoning for adultery), honour killings, and so on.

The MMA will create its own NGOs. So there will be more NGOs than at present and there will be some kind of competition. Just as we have "true democracy" and "not democracy", we will have "true development" and "not development". This will be in the long run.

About the hudood laws and other issues, everything will be frozen. Even this government was not keen on changing these laws. As far as the blasphemy laws are concerned, I don't see any respite. The peace process between India and Pakistan will be totally shattered. The MMA and the military have a consensus on policies relating to Kashmir, nuclear weapons, and Pakistan-India relations. Therefore, we will be back to square one!

Maulana Azam Tariq, who is said to be involved in more than 25 cases of sectarian killings, was allowed to contest the national assembly election from Jhang. And he won. Isn't it a matter of concern for your organisation?

I don't know why the government allowed him to contest the election. There have been so many instances in which the candidates' disqualification was blinked at. Not only the government, but the people too will pay for such follies.

But did you protest against it formally?

We do not protest against individual candidates. But when we will complete our report, and see how the people who should not have been allowed were allowed, we will mention this too.

The Rediff Interviews