The prime minister has spoken in no uncertain terms. He has laid out the country’s counter-terrorism plan. There is apparent ‘historic consensus’ around his plan, with virtually all political parties on board. The most significant of the decisions he has announced is the setting up of special military courts for a period of two years to try ‘hardened terrorists’. And these military courts will have a constitutional cover mind you.
One is not sure about the details or whether this means these courts will deal with new cases only. As the moratorium on capital punishment stands lifted, will the hanging spree that started soon after the Peshawar tragedy continue? What one is sure about is that the speedy justice system thus created will have even more compromised standards of justice and there will be more death sentences in the next two years at least.
The arguments in favour of capital punishment and against have been heard far too often. In Pakistan, those who are opposed to death sentence do so on largely three grounds: the intellectual and philosophical grounds; on deterrence being an ineffective argument; and finally, because of Pakistan’s own faulty justice system where there is a great risk of an innocent getting the final punishment. Besides, the existence of parallel laws like qisas and diyat, as pointed out by I.A. Rehman, defeat the very purpose of capital punishment.
But the context in which we are discussing capital punishment is different. Again, I.A. Rehman warns us, "it is precisely in such situations that reason must not be abandoned. This is necessary, among other things, to avoid the disastrous consequences of hasty, irrational steps."
The voices that are being raised in favour of capital punishment are on the contrary. These are special times, the country is in a ‘state of war’ and this requires extraordinary steps like deaths by hanging and military courts to do more of this, they say.
These voices are not willing to look beyond their immediate situation, the larger context, especially after Peshawar. If the state is responsible for creating the terror problem in this country, let the state sort it out, they seem to suggest. Earlier on, these voices spoke in favour of military operations and this included those who may have been opposed to capital punishment. They weren’t bothered about the opaqueness of the military operations and their potential long term impact on the rest of society.
Now that a political consensus has been forged in favour of military courts and extreme punishments, it might be worthwhile to rethink how these will further increase military’s stakes in the political system and turn the country into a more militarised one. It is important to understand, more than ever, that we have had a terror problem in this country because of lack of democracy. Yet, we want to rectify it by draining out whatever little democratic norms we are left with.
Some sane voices within the political parties, like that of Raza Rabbani in the PPP, have opposed the setting up of military courts. Some other sane voices that oppose capital punishment should be heard and allowed to prevail. Our Special Report, today, hints in that direction.