Freedom in the World 1999 - Pakistan

1999 Scores

Status: Not Free
Freedom Rating: 6.0
Civil Liberties: 5
Political Rights: 7

Ratings Change

Pakistan's political rights rating changed from 5 to 7, and its status from Partly Free to Not Free, due to the military overthrow of the elected government and the suspension of the constitution and parliament.

Overview

General Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's army chief-of-staff, overthrew an elected government in October 1999 and pledged to reform a country wracked by corruption, economic crises, violence along religious and ethnic lines, and lawlessness, but refused to announce a timetable to return the country to civilian rule.

Pakistan achieved independence in 1947 as a Muslim homeland with the partition of the former British India. In 1971, East Pakistan achieved independence as the new state of Bangladesh after a nine-month civil war. The 1973 Pakistani constitution provides for a lower national assembly, which currently has 217 members (including ten seats reserved for non-Muslims), elected for a five-year term, and an 87-seat senate, appointed by the four provincial assemblies. An electoral college chooses the president for a five-year term.

The army has ruled Pakistan for 25 of its 52 years of independence. Previous military governments suspended political rights and civil liberties, flouted the rule of law, and undermined democratic institutions. In 1985, the military dictator General Zia ul-Haq amended the constitution to allow the president to dismiss elected governments. After Zia's death in 1988, successive presidents sacked elected governments headed by Benazir Bhutto of the Pakistan People's Party (PPP) in 1990, Nawaz Sharif of the Pakistan Muslim League (PML) in 1993, and Bhutto again in 1996.

In the February 1997 elections, held with a 35 percent turnout, Sharif's PML and its allies won more than 160 seats against the PPP's 18. Over the next 20 months, Sharif used his huge parliamentary majority to undermine every institution capable of challenging him, while Pakistan slid further into bankruptcy and lawlessness. In April 1997, parliament repealed the president's constitutional power to dismiss governments. In December, Sharif won a protracted constitutional battle over supreme court appointments after a judicial panel ousted the chief justice and President Farooq Ahmed Leghari resigned. In late December, parliament and the provincial legislatures elected Rafiq Tarar, an Islamic fundamentalist and former supreme court justice, as president.

On May 28, 1998, Pakistan conducted nuclear tests in response to India's earlier tests, leading some multilateral institutions and Western governments to impose punitive economic sanctions. On October 7, Sharif took the unprecedented measure of sacking army chief of staff Jehangir Karamat after Karamat recommended the army be given a formal policy role. On October 9, the national assembly approved a constitutional amendment making the Koran and the Sunna, the sayings of the prophet Muhammad, Pakistan's supreme law. The amendment had little chance of senate passage, but critics charged Sharif with undermining secular rule. Sharif imposed direct federal rule on Sindh province on October 30 amid escalating political violence, a move the supreme court subsequently overruled, and in November suspended civil rights in Sindh.

In April 1999, a court sentenced Bhutto, in absentia, and her jailed husband, Asif Ali Zardari, to five-year prison terms and an $8.6 million fine on corruption charges. In May and June, Pakistani and Indian troops skirmished in Kashmir after Islamic militants backed by Pakistani troops seized strategic heights on the Indian side of the line of control. On July 12, Prime Minister Sharif ended the crisis by ordering the militants to withdraw. Both the army and Sharif blamed each other for the debacle, and the opposition seized upon Sharif's vulnerability by mounting a coordinated campaign of street protests.

On October 12, 1999 Sharif dismissed Musharraf, the chief of army staff, while the general was en route home from Colombo, Sri Lanka, and allegedly ordered air controllers to deny landing rights to Musharraf's commercial jetliner. The army commandeered Karachi airport, and Musharraf ousted Sharif. Musharraf declared a state of emergency, appointed himself chief executive, and suspended parliament, provincial assemblies, and the constitution (but declared that citizens still enjoyed the fundamental rights enshrined in the constitution). The army arrested Sharif and several of his close associates and male relatives. There were few public protests. Musharraf subsequently placed himself at the head of a seven-member governing National Security Council, appointed a small cabinet, and vowed to remain in office until he had cracked down on corruption and reformed the economy.

In November, a court put Sharif, his brother Shahbaz Sharif, and five other senior officials on trial for treason, conspiracy to murder, and attempted murder for denying Musharraf's plane landing rights. On December 21, the judge adjourned the case until January 12 without any formal indictments being brought. As part of a crackdown on graft, in November, authorities arrested at least 35 politicians and businessmen on charges of corruption and defaulting on major bank loans, although some defaulters were released after they settled their accounts. In December, authorities arrested at least 20 politicians, senior bureaucrats, and businessmen on corruption charges. At year's end, the country remained close to default on its $32 billion foreign debt, and the International Monetary Fund continued to withhold a $280 million disbursement from a $1.56 billion stabilization program.

Political Rights and Civil Liberties

By the end of 1999, Pakistan's new military ruler had not announced a timetable for a return to civilian rule. The existing electoral system concentrates political power in perhaps 5,000 land-owning families that dominate both main parties. Some 70 to 80 percent of parliamentary seats represent rural areas, based on a 1981 census. However, according to the Far Eastern Economic Review, preliminary indications from a 1998 census suggest that 35 to 40 percent of the population now lives in cities. Moreover, rural power itself is highly concentrated in the two percent of landlords who, in 1990, owned 24 percent of the land. This rural elite has repeatedly defeated efforts to redistribute land, change the electoral system, implement an agricultural tax, and improve educational opportunities for ordinary Pakistanis. Virtually every state institution is severely malfunctioning.

Pakistan has not formally annexed its Northern Areas, which form part of the disputed territory of Kashmir, in order to avoid legitimizing Kashmir's de facto partition by Islamabad, New Delhi, and Beijing. In October, the government established an assembly and high court in the Northern Areas. However, Islamabad retained financial and administrative powers, and the roughly one million residents are still not represented in the federal parliament. In the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of the North-West Frontier Province, tribal leaders prevent many women from voting. According to the independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP), some 20 million bonded laborers cannot vote. Christians and other minorities must vote on separate electoral rolls. Women are significantly underrepresented in politics.

In October 1999, the Berlin-based Transparency International rated Pakistan 88th on its corruption index with the 99th country, Cameroon, being the most corrupt. The Mahbub ul Haq Center in Islamabad estimated that since the 1980s, corruption has annually cost Pakistan's economy roughly 1.25 percent of its gross domestic product.

The judiciary consists of a supreme court, lower courts, and special courts, created under a 1997 antiterrorism law, which must conclude trials in seven days and provide only limited procedural safeguards and rights of appeal. In January 1999, the supreme court abolished the special military courts Sharif had created in Sindh in 1998 to prosecute civilians for major offenses within three days, but not before the courts had executed two men. The supreme court is independent. Lower courts are corrupt and subject to manipulation, and government officials frequently ignore court orders. In rural areas, feudal landlords and tribal elders frequently adjudicate disputes in unsanctioned courts called jirgas. In January, the federal government approved the imposition of Islamic law for all civil and criminal cases in the FATA.

Under the 1997 antiterrorism law, police enjoy broad powers to use lethal force, conduct searches, and make arrests. Officers are frequently involved in crime and routinely use excessive force in ordinary situations, torture detainees, and rape female detainees and prisoners. Police are also responsible for scores of custodial deaths and commit dozens of extrajudicial executions each year. In 1999, human rights activists accused the police of having a deliberate policy of extrajudicial killings of criminal suspects in Punjab and Sindh. Successive governments have arbitrarily detained political opponents under a 1960 public order law, false criminal charges, or, more recently, the 1997 antiterrorism law.

Since the early 1990s, violence between rival factions of the Mohajir Quami Movement (MQM), which represents Urdu-speaking migrants from India, and between the police and the MQM, has killed several thousand people in Karachi. Sectarian violence between two relatively small extremist groups, the Sunni-based Sipah-e-Sahaba and the minority Shiite Sipah-e-Mohammed, kills scores of people each year, mainly in Punjab.

The constitution and a series of colonial and postcolonial laws, including penal code provisions authorizing criminal sanctions for seditious or antistate speech or writing, give the government the power to curb expression and press freedom. Under governments headed by Sharif and Bhutto, authorities frequently detained, threatened, and assaulted journalists, attacked newspaper offices, and interfered with newspaper distribution. In 1999, arrests and physical attacks on journalists increased markedly. Successive governments also used their monopoly control of newsprint and threats to withhold official advertising as leverage over the press. Islamic fundamentalists also frequently harass journalists. Nevertheless, Pakistan's press is among the most outspoken in South Asia. The government owns nearly all electronic media, and news coverage favors the ruling party.

Freedom of assembly is generally respected, but police frequently detain activists prior to planned demonstrations and forcibly break up some demonstrations. The 1997 antiterrorism law authorized officials to ban groups and associations. In May 1999, the Punjab provincial government said it had banned 1,940 nongovernmental organizations, froze their bank accounts, and seized their assets, although it was not clear to what extent authorities had actually carried out these acts. Islamic fundamentalists have issued numerous death threats against the prominent human rights defender Asma Jehangir.

Section 295-C of the penal code, imposed in 1986, mandates the death sentence for defiling the prophet Muhammad. To date, appeals courts have overturned all blasphemy convictions. Nevertheless, Muslims have filed spurious blasphemy charges against Ahmadis, Christians, and Hindus to extort land and money. Human rights groups say several hundred Christians and Ahmadis are jailed for blasphemy. A 1984 ordinance prohibits Ahmadis, who are legally considered non-Muslims, from worshipping as Muslims. Christians, Ahmadis, and Hindus also face economic and social discrimination and are occasionally physically attacked by Islamists.

The 1979 Zina Ordinance introduced Sharia (Islamic law) into the penal code regarding sexual offenses. Courts have imprisoned numerous women for alleged extramarital sexual intercourse, often following false testimony by their husbands. Many rape victims who cannot meet the strict legal requirement to prove the crime are charged with adultery and imprisoned. Although courts have never carried out the most severe penalties, including death for adultery, the ordinance apparently deters many women from reporting rape.

Violence against women remains a serious problem. The Karachi-based Lawyers for Human Rights and Legal Aid estimated in 1997 that criminal gangs have trafficked some 200,000 Bangladeshi women to Pakistan for purposes of prostitution, often with the complicity of corrupt local officials. Authorities detain some 2,000 trafficking victims under criminal charges, mainly for illegal entry or under the Zina ordinances for extramarital sex. Each year hundreds of women are reportedly killed by their relatives for seeking divorce or being involved in unsanctioned relationships. Most so-called honor killings go unpunished owing to traditional norms, laws reducing punishment for actions supposedly caused by "grave and sudden provocation," and the Qisas and Diyat law, which allows the victim's relatives to forgive the offender.

The HRCP estimates there are 11 to 12 million child laborers, including many bonded laborers. Feudal landlords reportedly forcibly hold thousands of bonded laborers, despite 1992 legislation outlawing bonded labor and canceling enslaving debts. Trade unions are independent, but several sectors cannot organize and unions are prohibited in export processing zones. In March, authorities placed tighter restrictions on freedom of movement for the 1.5 million Afghan refugees.