Our lawyers

My first encounter with the highhandedness of the police goes back to the student days. I saw my friends, student political workers, picked up from the vicinity of the NED University of Engineering and Technology, Karachi, in the late 1980s. They were taken to the 555 Police Station in Saddar and tortured and interrogated. When some of us tried to visit them, a brawny policeman threatened us that we would also be shoved inside the lockup if we insisted on meeting the seditious students. At that time, a couple of young lawyers came to our rescue and we could get our fellow students bailed out after some days.
Many of our icons for democracy and human rights in the repressive years under General Zia and also during the years to come after that included lawyers like Aitzaz Ahsan, Munir A Malik, Asma Jehangir, Hina Jillani and Lateef Afridi. Many lawyers had set up special outfits for legal aid provision to weaker segments of society, bonded labour, peasants, urban poor, women who faced violence or those whose rights were usurped, and for bailing out and supporting journalists and political workers.
While there were many from that profession who sided with the powerful, indulged in inappropriate practices or used their legal expertise to fleece their clients, there were so many others who took a principled stand and worked side by side with the poor and the oppressed. Lawyers, in short, were seen as people who would help you protect your legal rights.
We want the police to reform as an institution and there are a few people in that department who are also committed to such reform. A number of initiatives are taken by both the governmental and non-governmental institutions to this end over the past few years. However, a major turn around remains dependent on the wider structural reform in the country and a change in our political culture. But things have changed in Pakistan in the recent years when it comes to the role of lawyers, within and outside the courts. As a citizen, it is not the police but a section of lawyers who you have to be afraid of more.
After garlanding the assassin, the lawyers threatened publicly that whoever dares to fight the case of Salmaan Taseer is likely to meet the same fate. Whatever political or religious opinion you subscribe to, is that really supporting the cause of justice? Then in the Supreme Court bar room, during a recess in the court hearing of the memo case, human rights activist and columnist Marvi Sirmed was harassed by senior lawyers. Not just that many of them have started banding together for promoting a certain kind of politics, they are forcefully trying to dominate other opinions. It wouldn’t have been so unbecoming if it were political workers belonging to the opposition, but some lawyers raised slogans against Aitzaz Ahsan for defending the prime minister in the contempt case.
Finally, what is happening with the police officers currently serving their sentences in Sahiwal jail on charges of throwing petrol bombs on a rally of lawyers in 2007 is rather alarming. First, they were denied access to any lawyer because the bar associations threatened that whoever takes the case faces the consequences. Then, after being sentenced by an ATC, their appeal in Lahore High Court remains unheard. The appeal case has been fixed before nine different benches but each time it is not heard because apparently the lawyers do not wish that to happen.
Mind you, some of these lawyers will become judges in future.

The writer is an Islamabad-based poet and author. Email: harris. khalique@gmail.com