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To those who have followed the developments of recent months, particularly since Mar. 9 this year when President Pervez Musharraf ousted the chief justice from his position, the assassination of the former prime minister, though shocking, does not come as a surprise. The recent strategy of the military regime is to destroy the activism of the Parliament and the judiciary, as stated by Musharraf himself. The assassination of Benazir Bhutto is a serious blow to any attempt to develop an independent Parliament based on multiparty democracy.
This was the second attempt on Bhutto's life; the first attack, from which she escaped unharmed, killed over 140 of her supporters. Benazir Bhutto subsequently made many comments about this attack. She said she suspected her attackers to be related to the military regime rather than to extremist elements. It is reported that she repeatedly expressed concern about threats to her life and that she considered certain acts, such as the iadequate security assigned to protect her, as efforts to target her.
In Pakistan, there are thousands of disappearances and many bomb attacks -- including attacks on judges, lawyers, journalists, democrats and human rights activists -- that go without investigation. In fact there is no agency with the power to investigate such attacks. The call for investigations falls on deaf ears as there is no institutional framework to handle this. Thus the call for investigations is an empty cry.
Those who engage in criminal acts and violence can take comfort in the fact that there are no law enforcement agencies to pursue them. There is no reason to believe that things will be different regarding the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. Already when she was still alive her call for investigations into bomb attacks aimed at her were not given any weight. The announcement of the military regime that one of its own judges, who remained in the High Court of Punjab Province after the ousting of the judges, is to enquire into the assassination is not likely to evoke any credibility.
A leader of a major political party has been killed. There are also threats to the life to the leader of another political party, Nawaz Sharif. The former chief justice of Pakistan is under house arrest and forty of the judges have been removed from their posts as they wish to assert the independence of the judiciary.
Thousands of lawyers were arrested and later freed due to international pressure. Two of the leaders of the Supreme Court Bar Association were assaulted, harassed and kept under severe control. Any lawyers who try to go to court to get legal redress face serious threats to life and liberty. Many media channels have been closed and numerous journalists have been harassed and arrested.
This is what Pakistan has become. It is a draconian military state that uses anti-terrorism as a pretext to strengthen itself and to oust the rule of law. In essence it is a lawless place where any act of cruelty to any person at all, be it a leading politician or a chief justice, can be done with impunity. Those are the conditions under which the ordinary Pakistanis have to live and must adjust to.
The world's leading superpower, the United States, wants to remain oblivious to these facts. It wants to see in the military regime an ally that fights against extremism and fights for democracy. As long as the United States wants to live under this illusion the military regime can take comfort in the hope that it can avoid the consequences of its acts of cruelty, including assassinations.
The international community needs to wake up to the fact of the emergence of a draconian military power in Pakistan that will do its utmost to destroy the possibility of parliamentary democracy or an independent judiciary. Until world opinion begins to condemn these acts of military brutality, assassinations such as that of Benazir Bhutto and other acts of violence will remain a routine occurrence in Pakistan. The violence of extremist elements cannot be prevented until the ruling regime itself begins to respect the rule of law.
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(Basil Fernando is director of the Asian Human Rights Commission based in Hong Kong. He is a Sri Lankan lawyer who has also been a senior U.N. human rights officer in Cambodia. He has published several books and written extensively on human rights issues in Asia.)
