Harshest criticism by US State Department of Pakistan HR, political situation

WASHINGTON, Feb 1: The US State Department has issued the harshest criticism yet of Pakistan's general political and human rights   situation, saying the government infringed on citizens' privacy rights, extrajudicial killings in Karachi  were still common, the judiciary was under political influence and journalists were on payrolls of  agencies.

"The government's human rights record remained poor  in 1997, with serious problems regarding police abuse, religious discrimination, and child  labour."

These, and other sweeping observations have been  made in the Annual 1997 Human Rights Report of the State Department, released here on Jan 30, in  which Pakistan has received twice as much space and attention as India.

The report said:" The government imposes limits on  the freedom of assembly, movement, and-for the Ahmadis in particular-religion. The extrajudicial  killing of criminal suspects, often in the form of deaths in police custody or staged encounters in which the  police shoot and kill the suspects, is common."

It, however, noted that although Karachi remained a  hotbed of politically-motivated violence, extrajudicial killings by security forces there had  diminished (as compared to the previous government)

The overall failure of successive governments to   prosecute and punish abusers was the single greatest obstacle to ending or even reducing the incidence of  abuse by the police, it said.

The authorities sometimes transferred, suspended, or   arrested offending officers, but seldom prosecuted or punished them. Investigating officers  generally shielded their colleagues. The report said Amnesty International estimateed that up to 100  people died from police torture each year.

It said the Accountability Commission, established  by the caretaker government and headed by a retired judge, had been overshadowed by an  "accountability cell," headed by a close associate of the prime minister. This cell had been accused of  conducting politically-motivated investigations of politicians, senior civil servants, and business  figures, designed to extract evidence and, in some cases, televised confessions of alleged wrongdoers.

The report gave the examples of televised  confessions extracted from Salman Farooqi, secretary of commerce under Benazir Bhutto; Ahmed Sadiq, Benazir  Bhutto's principal secretary; and Zafar Iqbal, chairman of the Capital Development  Authority.

It said most politicians and bureaucrats, who had  been charged with corruption or other crimes, were out on bail (in addition to murder, Benazir Bhutto's  husband, Asif Zardari, had also been charged with corruption).

The report said:" The MQM contends that several  thousand of its members are still in jail on politically-motivated charges which date from the  1992-96 period. The government is supposed to be reviewing the cases of these imprisoned  individuals (most of whom are awaiting trial) to see if they can be released. To date, few of them have been  released."

It said that although Pakistan's constitution  provided for an independent judiciary; in practice, the judiciary was subject to political influence.

" Journalists, routinely underpaid, are on the  unofficial payrolls of many competing interests, and the military (or elements within it) is presumed to be  no exception."