Source/Credit: Pakistan Today
By Pakistan Today | January 23, 2012
KARACHI - Karachi experienced an exceptionally high level of violence during the year and around 800 citizens were killed in the city during 2011, disclosed the Human Rights Watch (HRW) Report 2011 issued on Monday. According to the report prepared by the international group with offices in different countries, the year 2011 brought much misery to the nation with a natural disaster in the shape of the monsoon floods in Sindh, the increasing disappearances of citizens of Balochistan and at least six journalists killed. It was pointed out in the report that the killings in Karachi were perpetrated by armed groups patronised by the political parties in the city. “A Karachi-based party, with heavily armed cadres and a well-documented history of human rights abuse and political violence, was widely viewed as the major perpetrator of targeted killings,” it was pointed out in the report.
“Despite an October 6 Supreme Court ruling calling for an end to the violence in Karachi, the authorities took no meaningful measures to hold perpetrators accountable.”
The HRW said suicide bombings, armed attacks, and killings by the Taliban, al Qaeda, and their affiliates targeted nearly every sector of Pakistani society, including journalists and religious minorities, resulting in hundreds of deaths. The report also disclosed the details of the increasing attacks on civilians by militant groups, skyrocketing food and fuel prices, and the assumption of near-total control of foreign and security policy by a military that operated with complete impunity.
“Religious minorities faced unprecedented insecurity and persecution. Freedom of belief and expression came under severe threat as Islamist militant groups murdered Punjab Governor Salmaan Taseer and Federal Minorities Minister Shahbaz Bhatti over their public support for amending the country’s often abused blasphemy laws. Pakistan’s elected government notably failed to provide protection to those threatened by extremists, or to hold the extremists accountable.” In August and September, the province of Sindh experienced massive flooding for the second year running, displacing some 700,000 people. The report also mentioned that the relations between Pakistan and the US deteriorated markedly in 2011, fueled by a diplomatic crisis over a CIA contractor killing two men at a Lahore traffic junction and the US’s killing of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.
Conditions markedly deteriorated in the mineral-rich province of Balochistan. Human Rights Watch documented continued “disappearances” and an upsurge in killings of suspected Baloch militants and opposition activists by the military, intelligence agencies, and the paramilitary Frontier Corps. Baloch nationalists and other militant groups also stepped up attacks on non-Baloch civilians, teachers, and education facilities, as well as against security forces in the province. Pakistan’s military continued to publicly resist government reconciliation efforts and attempts to locate ethnic Baloch who had been subject to “disappearances.” The government appeared powerless to rein in the military’s abuses. The HRW stated that at least 200 Baloch nationalist activists including Abdul Ghaffar Lango, a prominent Baloch nationalist activist, and Hanif Baloch, an activist with the Baloch Students Organisation (Azad) were killed during the year, as well as dozens of new cases of disappearances.
The Shia and other vulnerable groups were also attacked across the country.
“In 2001, Aasia Bibi, a Christian from Punjab province, became the first woman in the country’s history to be sentenced to death for blasphemy. She continued to languish in prison after the Lahore High Court, in a controversial move, prevented President Asif Ali Zardari from granting her a pardon in November 2010. High-ranking officials of the ruling Pakistan People’s Party called for her release and the amendment of section 295(C) of Pakistan’s penal code, otherwise known as the blasphemy law. However, the government succumbed to pressure from extremist groups and dropped the proposed amendment.”
The HRW also stated members of the Ahmadi community continued to be a major target for blasphemy prosecutions and are subjected to specific anti-Ahmadi laws across the country.
In November, four Hindus, three of them doctors, were killed in an attack by religious extremists in the town of Shikarpur in Sindh, sending shockwaves through the minority community. Disclosing details on women rights, the HRW said mistreatment of women - including rape, domestic violence, and forced marriage - remains a serious problem. Public intimidation of, and threats to, women by religious extremists increased in major cities in 2011. The human rights group also said in its report that at least six journalists including Saleeem Shahzad, a reporter for the Hong Kong-based Asia Times Online and the Italian news agency Adnkronos International, Geo TV reporter Wali Khan Babar who was shot and killed in Karachi shortly after covering gang violence in the city and Tribal Union of Journalists President Nasrullah Khan Afridi, onlinenews agency reporter Munir Ahmed Shakir, Javed Naseer Rind, a sub-editor with the Urdu-language Daily Tawar were killed in 2011.
“Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry and the provincial high courts effectively muzzled media criticism of the judiciary in 2011 through threats of contempt of court proceedings, as has been the case since Pakistan’s independent judiciary was restored to office in 2009,” it was stated in the report. “In a positive development, journalists, who are vocally critical of the government, experienced less interference by elected officials than in previous years.”
Read original post here: There was nothing for Pakistan to cherish in 2011
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