Mission & Justice

Ian Cobain; 30/4/08

Britain’s Security Service, MI5, has been accused of “outsourcing” the torture of British citizens to a notorious Pakistani intelligence agency in an attempt to obtain information about terrorist plots and to secure convictions against al-Qaeda suspects. A number of British terrorism suspects who have been arrested in Pakistan at the request of British authorities say their interrogation by Security Service officers, shortly after brutal torture at the hands of agents of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI), has convinced them that MI5 colluded in the mistreatment. Those men have given detailed accounts of their alleged ordeals at the hands of the ISI over the past four years. Some of them appear to have been taken to the same secret interrogation centre in Rawalpindi, where they say they were repeatedly tortured before being questioned by MI5.

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17/4/08

Hundreds of Afghans returning home after the closure of a refugee camp in northwest Pakistan have been left stranded because of a roadblock, the United Nations refugee agency has said. About 70,000 Afghans are being forced to either return to Afghanistan or relocate elsewhere in Pakistan after the closure of the Jalozai refugee camp. Kamal Hyder, Al Jazeera’s correspondent reporting from the Peshawar-Torkham highway, said: “For the last three days the main crossing between Afghanistan and Pakistan has been closed because of a dispute between tribal elders and a group known as Lashkar-e-Islam.” Laskhar-e-Islam, which is sympathetic to the Taliban, stopped trucks along the highway, saying that drivers must stop trafficking alcohol and drugs across the border.

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16/5/08

Afghans in Pakistan’s largest refugee village have been forced to leave as a deadline to close the camp has passed. More than 3,300 Afghans have left Jalozai for Afghanistan since March, following an agreement between elders in the camp and Pakistani authorities to leave between March 1 and April 15 At least 70,000 Afghans in Jalozai, in Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province, must now either relocate to another camp or return to Afghanistan.

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Taghred Chandab & Paula Bronstein; 13/4/08

They are innocent victims of brutality, but now there is hope for women of Pakistan scarred and disfigured by vicious acid attacks. Dressed in a beautiful sari and Islamic head dress, Iram Saeed appears to be just like any other Pakistani woman.For a moment she is able to conceal the pain and scars from gazing eyes. Then she removes her heavy clothing and dark sunglasses, revealing devastation.Ten years ago, aged 19, Iram was the victim of an acid attack. Her crime? To reject a marriage proposal.

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Declan Walsh; 18/3/08

A salvo of suspected US missiles killed at least 20 people, including several al-Qaeda militants, in Pakistan’s tribal areas, a day after a restaurant bombing in the capital Islamabad wounded US and British officials, including four FBI agents. The bloody weekend underscored the extremist threat facing the new coalition government of erstwhile rivals Nawaz Sharif and Asif Zardari, which was due to be formed following the swearing in of Parliament yesterday. Tribesmen near Wana, the main town in South Waziristan, reported seeing up to seven missiles fired at two houses on Sunday. Earlier they heard a buzzing noise - the signature sound of US Predator drones, which have carried out at least two attacks on suspected al-Qaeda hideouts in the tribal areas this year.

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29/2/08

The most common crimes against women in Pakistan’s Punjab province include honour killing, abductions, torture and even burning; last year their number rose considerably. This kind of violence however has gone largely unpunished according to the annual Report on Violence Against Women that was released by the Citizen’s Commission for Human Development at a press conference yesterday in Lahore.The report noted a tragic increase in the violence against women. For the first time since annual reports were released nine years ago murder topped the list with 901 cases, involving relatives in 747 of them. Police investigated only 600 cases, arresting 122 people, but only 30 were found guilty.

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12/2/08

Charanjit Singh faced a brick wall when he tried to get an Indian visa for his wife, because she had no identity card, but a new law on registration of Sikh marriages should remove that obstacle. Pakistan became the second Asian country to enact a separate law for registration of Sikh marriages when President Pervez Musharraf signed the Sikh Marriage Ordinance (SMO) 2008 on Jan. 16. For Singh this provides a way out of a dead-end. He and his wife have been married for 12 years and have three children, but he has not been able to bring her to meet his relatives in India. “Normally the Gurdwara (a Sikh temple) does not issue marriage certificates, and we were referred to get the document and an affidavit from court to apply for the identity card,” the 32-year-old Sikh told UCA News. But this avenue also proved fruitless.

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Benazir Bhutto; 11/2/08

When I entered Harvard University in the (northern autumn) of 1969, Pakistan was under a military dictatorship. In America I saw the power of the people to change and influence policies. While I was at university, my father was leading a movement in Pakistan for the political rights of the people. The struggle in Pakistan and the reality of the ability of people in America to assert themselves, to stand up without fear for what they believed in, were important influences in my life. I was positioned between two worlds, the world of dictatorship and the world of democracy. I could see the power of the people in a democracy and contrast it with the lack of political power in my own country. I saw that people in America took their rights for granted, the rights of freedom of speech, freedom of association, freedom of movement. In my country people got killed or imprisoned fighting for these freedoms.

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9/2/08

As soon as the Church team started their distribution, mothers took the dirty clothes off their babies and clothed them in new ones. Older children put on the new clothes themselves, including the six children of stone breaker Jewan Shaghan, who had no bedding or extra clothing for a week after their straw hut caught fire. “We thank the Church team for providing the food and other articles,” Shaghan told UCA News as the 40-year-old Christian placed a newly donated mattress on his bedstead. “Today is our feast.” Shaghan heads one of five families whose huts burned down on Jan. 25. An unattended outside hearth started the blaze. Neighbors took the families in to weather the cold nights before the small community could rebuild.

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6/2/08
Church people have termed the Pakistan government’s recommendation to replace regular courts in parts of North West Frontier Province with Islamic courts as “a flawed system.” The reaction came after Pakistan’s caretaker government declared Jan. 23 that it would implement its proposed Shar’i Nizam-e-Adl Regulation 2008 as a move toward ending insurgency in the province, especially in the troubled Swat district. The regulation has already been sent to the president for approval, to take effect in February. It would replace ordinary judicial officers with qazi (Islamic judges) and enforce Shari’a (Islamic law) in Chitral, Dir and Swat districts. Reportedly the qazi would come from existing judicial personnel with additional Shari’a training but would have to rely on “assistants” appointed by a committee including non-judicial and local personnel.

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