HRW report on Pakistan: repression on lawyers and judges

Human Rights Watch publicou hoxe un informe sobre Pakistán, centrado no estado de emerxencia que decretou o presidente Pervez Musharraf e que suspendeu a constitución vixente, poñendo como excusa a loita contra o terrorismo e o extremismo islamista. Pero na realidade, a maioría dos miles de detidos e represaliados son avogados, xuíces e membros dos partidos políticos da oposición. No informe fálase tamén da responsabilidade dos principais aliados de Pakistán, o Reino Unido e os Estados Unidos.

O informe leva por título “Destroying Legality: Pakistan’s Crackdown on Lawyers and Judges”. Copio e pego un extracto da súa introducción:

[...] At 5 p.m. on November 3, 2007, Pakistan’s president, General Pervez Musharraf, acting in his capacity as army chief, suspended the constitution and declared a state of emergency, replacing the constitution with a Provisional Constitution Order (PCO).

Musharraf announced in a televised address to the nation in the early hours of November 4 that he had been forced into subverting the constitution to combat terrorism and Islamist extremists. [...]

In the name of fighting terrorism and Islamist extremism, Musharraf instead mounted what was effectively a coup against Pakistan’s civil society. Targets of the crackdown included lawyers, judges, human rights activists, opposition political party members, journalists, students, and academics.

The declaration of the state of emergency itself was not, as Musharraf claimed, necessitated by new terrorism threats, but by perceived threats to his own continued rule by an energized, principled lawyers’ movement calling for genuine respect for independence of the judiciary and the rule of law. Scores of government opponents including lawyers remain in prison across the country today; the leaders of the lawyers’ movement and senior judges of the Supreme Court remain under house arrest. Thousands have been released, but the fear of being re-arrested hangs over them as charges against them under the Anti-Terrorism Act remain on file. Under the restored constitution, lawyers have to contend with the possibility of being banned from their profession should they earn the governments ire. And all government opponents face the very real possibility of finding themselves in “legal” military custody and facing prosecution by military courts under the amended Army Act. [...]