Emphatic words are contained in the order issued after the hearing of a petition on a case regarding police action against protesting students in Islamabad. The students had gathered in Islamabad recently against the alleged enforced disappearance of their fellow student Hafeez Baloch. The police used violence against these peaceful protesters and also registered criminal cases against them.
The IHC chief justice has done the right thing by chastising the local police and administration officials and reminding them that their constitutional duty is to protect the rights of citizens. Unfortunately, such harsh ways of dealing with citizens have become the norm for the police and administration officials. This attitude is a hangover from the colonial times that the bureaucracy refuses to discard despite knowing that the relationship between the state and the citizen has changed since those times. Such abhorrent behavior becomes all the more troublesome when it is employed against people who are already nursing grievances against the state.
These students from Balochistan were raising genuine questions about enforced disappearances that have become a festering wound in the province.
IHC stops police from arresting Imaan Mazari, others over protest outside the press club in the capital
The Islamabad High Court (IHC) on Friday stopped police from arresting more than 200 people, including lawyer Imaan Zainab Hazir-Mazari, in connection with a case regarding an ongoing protest against a Baloch student’s disappearance outside the National Press Club in the capital. The court also directed the interior secretary, Ministry of Human Rights secretary, chief commissioner Islamabad, and the inspector general of police to appear in the next hearing on March 7, directing police officials not to arrest anyone until that date.
According to a previous Dawn story, the FIR said protesters allegedly pelted police with stones on March 1 in front of the National Press Club and outside the camp that had been set up by Baloch Student Council led by Dad Shah, Qamar Baloch, and Hazir-Mazari along with some 200 students. The case, which was registered at Kohsar police station on the complaint of its own station house officer (SHO) on various charges, included “criminal conspiracy, rioting, unlawful assembly, disobedience, defamation, intentional insult with intent to provoke breach of peace and assault”.The FIR said the protesters installed a tent despite the warning by the police, forcing it to confiscate the tent, resulting in a physical clash. Later, the students reached China Chowk by pushing the police and staged a sit-in there and their strength increased gradually. Reforming the bureaucracy is a goal that remains unfulfilled despite claims by all governments, including the present one. Police reform is also an issue that has quietly been buried.
The result is a continuation of a culture that perpetuates the role of the state as a predator and not a protector. The courts are doing well to balance this state high-handedness by enforcing the rights of citizens.
