Over the years, laws have only become a harsh myth for the people in Pakistan where the former “might is right” has now institutionalized wrapping voices for superiority of law and order. Apart from abundance of enforced disappearances of people across Balochistan, the Islamabad police recently took into their “illegal custody” the Baloch lawyer, Imaan Zainab Mazari-Hazir Advocate and her husband, Hadi Ali Chatta Advocate, when they were on their way to Judicial Complex Islamabad despite the fact that the couple had already been granted protective bail a day earlier from the Islamabad High Court (IHC). Though they were clearly “arrested” by the police, a “First Information Report” was lately brought on record where they were arrested in a former FIR against them when the bar body called for a protest against the 26th Amendment, which also include other bar leaders. However, they were produced before a court lately where the lawyers were not allowed to even enter court. Both the duo were shifted to Adiala Jail for a 14-day judicial custody. Their families allege that they were denied access to the detained lawyers along with food and medicine.
The actual point is, the recent state policies have changed where civilian movements have “no tolerance” from the upper powerful class. Under the new policy, they lodge FIRs against powerful people voices and leave them in dormant unless they get a chance to use them accordingly. The same policy has been applied for years in Balochistan which is gradually shifting to the other regions of the country. The lawyer couple has been facing the very similar policy in the Islamabad city – no matter they are the custodian of law.
Earlier, the duo was involved in “bogus” tweet charges, and participating in the “missing persons camp” in Islamabad by the families of forcibly disappeared Baloch. To be fairly right, the duo have been facing all the ill treatment due to their constant support and voice they raised practically for the families of forcibly disappeared Baloch under the brutal hands of the law enforcement agencies. The lawyers, that too very prominent, were illegally kept in detention centers and a bogus case was surfaced hours later after resisting voices emerged from bar bodies across Pakistan. But that does not justify the hours of detentions. It could only be a matter of consideration had the judiciary been fairly independent.
In their call, the Islamabad bar bodies called for “reemergence of lawyers’ movement” which hit the country back in 2007 with the ouster of the fourth Martial Law administrator Pervez Musharraf. With all the contemporary situations, a lawyers’ movement is perhaps the dire need of hour if they intend to save a fall of the civilian rights. Otherwise, we will continue to report the “enforced disappearances of law” too.