Year in focus: 2010 characterised by rights abuses

Source: Express Tribune

Date: January 26, 2011

The Taliban and other religious extremists in Pakistan increased their deadly attacks against civilians and public spaces during 2010, while the government response was marred by serioushuman rights violations, Human Rights Watch said in its World Report 2011 on Monday.

The 649-page report – Human Rights Watch’s 21st annual review of human rights practices around the globe – summarizes major human rights trends in more than 90 states and territories worldwide. Suicide bombings, armed attacks, and killings by the Taliban, al Qaeda, and their affiliates targeted nearly every sector of the society, including religious minorities and journalists, resulting in hundreds of deaths, the report said.

The country’s largest cities bore the brunt of these attacks. Two attacks in late May 2010 against the Ahmadiyya community in Lahore killed nearly 100 people. On July 1, a suicide bombing at Data Darbar killed 40 people. Militant attacks targeting civilians in conflict areas amounted to war crimes, HRW said.

“The government needs to use all lawful means to hold those responsible to account,” said Ali Dayan Hasan, senior South Asia researcher at Human Rights Watch.

The government’s response to militant attacks instead has routinely violated basic rights, Human Rights Watch said. Thousands of Taliban suspects have been held in unlawful military detention without charge, many of them in two military facilities in Swat, one in the Khyber agency of the tribal areas, and at least one more in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

While the US remained Pakistan’s most significant ally and was the largest donor to the flood relief effort, Human Rights Watch documented several instances in 2010 in which US aid to Pakistan appeared to contravene the US Leahy Law. The law requires the US state department to certify that no military unit receiving US aid is involved in gross human rights abuses and, when such abuses are found, to investigate them thoroughly and properly.

Persecution and discrimination under cover of law against religious minorities and other vulnerable groups remained serious problems, Human Rights Watch said.

Aerial drone strikes by the US also escalated in 2010.

Pakistan’s media remained vocal critics of the government and experienced less interference from the elected government than in previous years, the report said. However, fearful of retaliation, the media rarely reported on human rights abuses by the military in counterterrorism operations, it added.

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