One year ago today, Pakistan's former President and Chief of Army Staff Pervez Musharraf imposed an extraconstitutional "state of emergency," which his critics described as a full-scale, martial law crackdown. To refresh your recollections, have a look at last year's SAJAforum posts on both the imposition of emergency rule itself and the world's reactions.
Musharraf himself is now gone from the political scene, having resigned in August, but the legacy of his Emergency is being remembered today in Pakistan and around the world.
Amnesty International's Asia-Pacific Director, Sam Zarifi, laments that one year later, Pakistan "is still suffering from the abusive policies [Musharraf] put in place" during last year's crackdown:
Pakistan's leaders need to actively demonstrate that they respect the rule of law and that the government is responsible for the human rights of all Pakistanis. Without re-establishing its legitimacy and credibility through a strong independent judiciary system, the Pakistani government will be unable to overcome the many troubles facing the country. [link]
In Pakistan, lawyers and others have marked the occasion with protests. Lawyers have rallied across the country, calling on new President Asif Ali Zardari's government to fully roll back all of Musharraf's extraconstitutional measures, including his removal of Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry:
Thousands of lawyers across the country held protests on Monday, the first anniversary of the imposition of a six-week stint of emergency rule by then president Pervez Musharraf....
About 3,000 lawyers, political party workers and rights activists, many chanting "Go Zardari, go" gathered in the city of Rawalpindi to mark the anniversary of Musharraf's emergency with a fresh call for Chaudhry to be reinstated.
"Don't compel us to knock on the doors again," firebrand lawyers' leader Ali Ahmed Kurd told the rally.
"We want the independence of the judiciary and the rule of law in the country and if that doesn't happen, the power of 100,000 lawyers and members of civil society will emerge like a storm," Kurd said.
Analysts say Zardari, who was elected president in September, does not want Chaudhry to be reinstated as the country's top judge.
Zardari fears Chaudhry might reopen legal challenges to an amnesty from graft charges Musharraf granted Bhutto, Zardari and other senior officials in their party last year as part of a proposed power-sharing deal, analysts say. [link]
Chaudhry, who will be honored in the United States later this month by both the New York City Bar Association and Harvard University, addressed the same rally in Rawalpindi:
Chaudhry said the foundation for the emergency was laid much earlier. The regime led by Musharraf and former premier Shaukat Aziz became upset when the apex court ruled against the privatisation of steel mills and took up the cases of political exile of political leaders Nawaz Sharif and late Benazir Bhutto, he said.
A petition seeking a bar on Musharraf holding the two offices of army chief and President and another seeking his disqualification in presidential polls for contesting while still in uniform also caused unease in the regime, Chaudhry underlined.
He said messages were conveyed to him by interlocutors acting on behalf of Musharraf that matters were in his hands and he could decide in Musharraf's favour if he wanted as such a move was "important for the country". He added: "I thought this was a very surprising demand." [link]
Writing in the Daily Times, Mazhar Abbas, Secretary General of the Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists, recalls in some detail last year's movement by Pakistan's journalists to resist the Emergency's crackdown on Pakistan's media:
I contacted other PFUJ leaders, and we decided to meet at the Press Club in Rawalpindi. Despite apprehensions, leaders from across the country attended the emergency meeting on November 5, and unanimously decided to resist the curbs placed on the media under the emergency, and called for joint action involving all media stakeholders.
Our call for a protest movement against the media ban, and demand to end emergency and reinstatement of deposed judges made the government nervous. Soon after the first major rally in Islamabad, a case was registered against 200 journalists, including the PFUJ leadership. I asked then Secretary Information Anwar Mahmood about the case. He denied it, but it was later confirmed. If this was an attempt to put pressure on PFUJ, it failed, and the movement continued for 78 days....
Examples of such resistance from journalists are rare in this region. There were no protest demonstrations in India when former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi imposed emergency. Similarly, there is no resistance in Bangladesh against media restrictions. Journalists in Nepal, however, created history by joining hands with political forces and succeeded despite suppression. [link]
Abbas also assesses the state of media freedom one year later, under the new PPP-led government:
Finally, on the eve of elections here in the United States, it is worth recalling what the major candidates for president and vice president said about the Emergency a year ago:
- On November 8, 2007, a few days after Musharraf's imposition of the emergency, Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. Joe Biden cosponsored (along with three colleagues) a Senate resolution condemning Musharraf's Emergency. and calling upon Musharraf "to revoke the state of emergency, respect the rule of law and immediately release political detainees, restore the Constitution of Pakistan, restore freedom of the press and judicial independence in Pakistan, and reinstate all dismissed members of the Supreme Court of Pakistan."
- That same week, Sen. John McCain expressed his view at a town hall meeting in Iowa that Musharraf "had made a mistake" by imposing the Emergency. However, several weeks later, McCain described Musharraf as a “scrupulously honest” man who had “done a pretty good job,” and who deserved the “benefit of the doubt” in the aftermath of the Emergency and Benazir Bhutto’s assassination.
The Council on Foreign Relations summarizes the candidates' current positions on Pakistan more generally here.
More commentary on the anniversary of Musharraf's Emergency:
- The News International, Editorial, "One Year On"
- The Post, Editorial, "A Black Day"
Earlier on SAJAforum:
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