Amnesty International (AI) has criticized the Pakistani government and the militants it is fighting in parts of Khyber-Pukhtoonkhwa Province and the FATA on the border with Afghanistan for violating international humanitarian law and human rights, even though conditions in other areas, such as Swat, are improving.
Nearly four million people are effectively living under the Taliban in northwest Pakistan without rule of law and effectively abandoned by the Pakistani government.
The Pakistani government has to follow through on its promises to bring the region out of this human rights black hole and place the people of FATA under the protection of the law and constitution of Pakistan.
Amnesty’s report, As if hell fell on me [http://amnesty.org.uk/uploads/documents/doc_20439.pdf], documents among other things the use of civilians as human shields by militants, restrictions by both the Pakistan army and militants on civilians leaving areas of fighting and “insufficient care” by the military to protect civilians. The government disputed this.
The London-based rights watchdog also said more than a million displaced people were “in desperate need of aid” and narrated accounts of abuses by tribal lashkars (militias), set up with government support to keep the Taliban at bay.
The lashkars are almost as bad as the Taliban. They use guns to threaten people and have killed in the past. The Minister for Human Rights, Mumtaz Alam Gilani, called the report “unfortunate and incorrect”. Pakistani security forces had made significant gains against Taliban militants and had uprooted their bases in most parts of FATA, he said. “When there is war, there [are] no civil rights,” he told the media in Islamabad. [http://www1.voanews.com/english/news/asia/Pakistan-disputes-Amnesty-report-on-Taliban-Strength-in-the-Countrys-Northwest--96065654.html]
There are targeted killings of those who oppose the Taliban. People have no idea when things will get back to normal. There is also no work as so many shops and businesses have closed down.
Positive Swat
In some areas of Khyber-Pukhtoonkhwa, notably Swat District, residents say their lives have greatly improved since the army drove out the Taliban in 2009.
In an area where two years ago schools were being burned down and girls prevented from attending classes, 30-year-old school-teacher Fyza Akbar contends with a class of six-year-olds prone to giggling fits because she discarded her burqa two months ago, allowing her hair to tumble out from below her loose dupatta (head scarf).
”They have rarely seen women without veils, except their mothers or sisters inside their own homes,” Akbar said, adding that she took off her burqa because “the Taliban are no longer here to impose it”.
The situation of human rights has improved in Swat and no incidents of public floggings or patrols by militants – a regular feature of life in Mingora, the principal city of Swat before the April 2009 military operation. [http://www.hrcp-web.org/showprel.asp?id=126].
”Things are better here and life is almost normal,” Salim Shaukat, a Mingora-based lawyer and social activist, said. He said about 20 percent of women had returned to work where they could opt to wear chadors (shawls) rather than burqas and most people were not as fearful as before.
Filed under: Pakistan Under President Zardari, Swat, Talibanization, Tribal Areas Tagged: | Human Rights, Pakistan, Swat, Taliban, Terrorism in Pakistan, Tribal Areas, War on Terror
Has Amnesty International (AI) ever criticised America and its Allied Forces for violation of human rights in Afghanistan while tackling Afghan Talibans? Thier report is biased ,incorrect and misleading.This is aimed at pressurizing Pakistan.We should condemn it.Pak Army is achieving significant success in uprooting Talibans from most parts of FATA.Things are improving not only in Swat but other tribal areas as well.
We must purge the concept of “honor” from our collective consciousness. Nothing else is enough.