The Hindu : Bush, Musharraf urged to address rights issues

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Jun 22, 2003

International

International

Bush, Musharraf urged to address rights issues

By Sridhar Krishnaswami

Washington JUNE 21. On the eve of the visit to Washington by the Pakistan President, Pervez Musharraf, and in the high profile meeting set in the Presidential retreat at Camp David, leaders of the United States and Pakistan are being urged to have human rights as a priority item on their agenda.

"The U.S. and Pakistan Presidents should discuss democratic reform and an end to rights abuses in Pakistan; and the reform of U.S. laws and policies introduced after September 11 that infringe on the rights of non-U.S. citizens, many of them Pakistani'', the Human Rights Watch has said. "President Bush is in a unique position to influence General Musharraf on Pakistan's poor human rights record. And Gen. Musharraf should question President Bush about illegal detentions in Guantanamo and post-9/11 immigration policies that have violated the rights of non-citizens'', Brad Adams of the Asia Division of the Human Rights Watch has said in a statement.

There has been the general concern in this country that since Gen. Musharraf took power in 1999, there has been large scale unilateral tampering with the Constitution which have basically strengthened the hand of the Chief Executive at the expense of elected members of Parliament. There is the growing concern that the tampering with the Constitution has left the various laws that are discriminatory to women largely in tact. Human Rights Watch urged the Bush administration to insist that the Government of Pakistan take concrete measures to end its practice of using torture to stifle criticism and silence political opponents... President Bush must raise with Gen. Musharraf the troubling implications of the Legal Framework Order and ask for a timetable to genuine elections'', the Human Rights Watch has said. But Pakistan's track record on human rights violations and trampling on the Constitution are not the only thing that is meriting attention. There is the call also on Gen. Musharraf to raise with his U.S. counterpart the legal status of those people detained at Guantanamo Bay base that include about 100 Pakistanis.

The Human Rights Watch has not only called for the release of all those Taliban prisoners not connected with Al-Qaeda or charged for any criminal offence, but is also protesting the way in which the detainees are going to be tried — through military commissions."The Guantanamo detainees have disappeared into a black hole in the American legal system.

The United States has an obligation to treat all detainees in accordance with international law, and Musharraf should tell Bush that'', Mr. Adams has said.

For quite sometime now, especially in the aftermath of September 11, 2001, there has been the charge that this administration has not been tough enough on Pakistan on the subject of human rights and promotion of democracy, largely because it has come to treat Islamabad as a "staunch ally'' in the war against terrorism, especially as it pertains to Afghanistan and Al-Qaeda.

The U.S. naturally rejects this contention. The flip side to this has been anger from within the Pakistani community in this country over the manner in which this Republican administration has gone about treating members of the community in the aftermath of 9/11.

Some of this has to do with the detention of several Pakistanis at Guantanamo, which the Government in Islamabad and its embassy here have been raising with Washington.

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