Save Shafqat, Save Pakistan’s Judicial System – Editorial

It is a shame that our col­lec­tive sense of jus­tice hard­ly goes beyond a fran­tic demand for vengeance. Since gov­ern­ment announced lift­ing of mora­to­ri­um on death penal­ty last Decem­ber, 39 con­victs have been exe­cut­ed in dif­fer­ent jails in Pak­istan. Ini­tial­ly it was announced that only hard-core ter­ror­ists will be hanged, but, as was fore­seen by many con­cerned cit­i­zens, the cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment is now being exe­cut­ed in all sorts of crimes. Only day before yes­ter­day when 12 peo­ple were hanged, the news anchors jubi­lant­ly kept repeat­ing ‘the good news’ the whole day. Our opin­ion lead­ers leave no stone unturned in mak­ing us feel as if the only step hold­ing us back in bring­ing ulti­mate peace and pros­per­i­ty in the coun­try is mass pub­lic hang­ings.

The lat­est vic­tim of this fren­zy is going to be Shafqat Hus­sain who will be hanged tomor­row. Con­vict­ed of kid­nap­ping and mur­der, he has already spent 11 mis­er­able years in jail. The most sig­nif­i­cant fact about Shafqat’s con­vic­tion is that he was sen­tenced to death when he was only 14. Like so many oth­ers, he was also bru­tal­ly tor­tured to get a con­fes­sion. He was tried and sen­tenced by an anti-ter­ror­ism court. Such a court itself is an aber­ra­tion of jus­tice where the uni­ver­sal prin­ci­ple of jus­tice, i.e. ‘inno­cent until proven guilty’ is reversed. The details of his tri­al and sub­se­quent con­vic­tion is a study in itself of the unjust sys­tem of jus­tice in Pak­istan.

Any­one who ever had an encounter with Pakistan’s judi­cial sys­tem knows how this sys­tem is rot­ten to its very core. While gov­ern­ment finds it con­ve­nient as an imme­di­ate redress by offer­ing more hang­ings as an answer to pub­lic demand for secu­ri­ty, this is any­thing but just.

The pub­lic con­sen­sus achieved in the post-Peshawar inci­dent sce­nario was the high time for our state to take account of why the judi­cial sys­tem was fail­ing in pun­ish­ing ter­ror­ists. This sit­u­a­tion could have served as a dri­ve for a long await­ed reforms in our colo­nial judi­cial sys­tem. But the rul­ing elite pre­ferred to pla­cate pub­lic emo­tions with a two-pronged solu­tion of mil­i­tary courts and resum­ing exe­cu­tions. As long as the sys­tem­at­ic fail­ures of the judi­cial sys­tem and our vengeance based approach to jus­tice remains, all hopes for jus­tice and peace are doomed.

It is also a case in point that in this coun­try a 14-year-old who is tor­tured to con­fess is treat­ed as ter­ror­ist while Mum­taz Qadri, the fanat­ic assas­sin of late Gov­er­nor Salman Taseer, is treat­ed as an ordi­nary crim­i­nal. This shows that Lady Jus­tice in Pak­istan is noth­ing but sub­servient to the con­straints and par­tial­i­ties of our judi­cia­ry.

Whether Shafqat Hus­sain actu­al­ly did com­mit those crimes or not, his exe­cu­tion will be unjust and a mark of shame on our soci­ety. No one should be killed for an alleged crime com­mit­ted as a juve­nile. Will our author­i­ties wake up to this sim­ple truth?