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Pakistan
Character of the Security Forces
Independence had little impact on the police forces, which, like
the military, simply switched their allegiance from the British
to a new, indigenous regime. The great mass of police work remained
the same, and the political role of the police in supporting the
British soon found a parallel in independent Pakistan, as the
regime was itself beset by political disturbances and extended
the definition of crime to include such antistate activities as
terrorism and subversion. Even though the forces of law and order
had become the instruments of an indigenous government, any significant
advantages that had accrued from the changeover have largely been
dissipated.
Public attitudes toward the police, historically regarded with
distrust and fear, have not changed; indeed, the police are held
in low esteem. In British times, the Indian Police Service-- the
predecessor of the PSP--was nearly incorruptible and was fairly
immune from political pressure that did not emanate from London.
Since independence, however, politicization of the police has
become increasingly pervasive. Corruption in the lower ranks has
proliferated and permeated the PSP; in the frequent periods when
Pakistan was under oppressive rule, the police were as repressive
as they were in British times.
Police tactics in British India were never gentle, but in contemporary
Pakistan, according to the Herald, a magazine published
in Karachi, "The police have institutionalized torture to a point
where it is viewed as the primary method of crime detention. Police
torture has become so commonplace that it has slowly lost the
capacity to shock and disgust." These charges were echoed by Amnesty
International's especially bleak appraisal of Pakistan's human
rights situation in its June 1992 "International News Release"
report. The report, reflecting the law and order breakdown in
Sindh and the government's reaction to it, stated that government
opponents often are harassed, placed under arrest, and detained
for unspecified periods of time. Scores of prisoners of conscience
have been held for their political activities or religious beliefs.
The practice of repeatedly bringing false charges against members
of the political opposition is a widely used tactic in Pakistani
politics and has been used to arrest thousands of opposition party
activists. According to the United States State Department's Country
Reports on Human Rights Practices for 1993, there were no
significant efforts in 1992 or 1993 to reform either the police
or the judicial system, and authorities continued to be lax in
their prosecution of abuses in these areas. Pakistani and international
human rights organizations have demanded that steps be taken to
reverse the trend by bringing torturers to justice and by taking
such procedural steps as reducing the time prisoners spend in
places of first arrest, where most torture takes place.
Torture is a particularly acute problem in cases in which the
suspect is thought to have committed a political crime, but it
is not uncommon in serious criminal cases. General police brutality
in handling all suspects is routine. Police frequently act without
warrants or other proper authorization, and individuals disappear
into the criminal justice process for weeks before they can be
found and, through writs of habeas corpus, be brought into regular
judicial channels. Rape of prisoners, both male and female, is
common. Prisoners often die in detention but are reported as killed
in the course of armed encounters. Police also are alleged to
extort money from families of prisoners under threat of ill treatment.
The performance of the police and their failure to act against
political groups that run their own torture machinery are especially
bad in Sindh, but there is no Pakistani who looks on an encounter
with the police with equanimity.
Amnesty International and other human rights groups welcomed
the establishment in 1993 of a Human Rights Commission by the
interim government of Moeen Qureshi and recommended to his successor,
Benazir Bhutto, that the new government investigate past torture
cases and enforce safeguards against the use of torture. Despite
continued trouble in Sindh, observers have discerned what appears
to be a genuine interest by the current government in addressing
some of the more egregious human rights problems endemic in Pakistan
today.
Data as of April 1994
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