IRIN focus on police brutality

Wajid Ali is hardly an activist, but his allegation of police torture in 1999 and demand for justice could transform him into just that. His case highlights a major human-rights problem facing ordinary citizens in Pakistan today with regard to police brutality and torture. “The people who did this to me are not human,” the 30 year-old primary school teacher told IRIN. “What happened to me is like something out of the Middle Ages. I want justice, but that’s not possible in Pakistan.” Ali’s problems began after the kidnapping and murder of a colleague’s son in Dargai village northeast of Peshawar in Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province. In an attempt to pressurise local authorities to hunt down the culprits, Ali led a large group of teachers from the impoverished community to protest against what they viewed as apathy on the part of the police in taking action. That protest nearly cost Ali his life when, on 28 December 1999, police decided to bring him in for questioning at the local Sadheri police station. Disrespect and criticism of police action is not easily tolerated in Pakistan. For two days and two nights, Ali was brutally beaten and tortured by eight different policemen in an effort to get him to confess to the very crime he was trying to persuade the police to solve. Tied to a ceiling fan upside down, Ali was brutally beaten by three policemen in full view of the station’s deputy superintendent. When attempts to elicit a confession failed, he was chained to a wooden bench, where electric shocks were administered. After some 200 family members and supporters gathered outside the police station calling for his release, police officials demanded and inducement equivalent to US $1,600. But this was a poor community, so the beating continued until, during the night of 30 December, Ali collapsed. Doctors were called: Ali was dying. The Ali case is hardly unusual. “This is not the first time I have heard of such cases, and it won’t be the last,” Afrasiyab Khattak, the chairman of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) told IRIN. “In Pakistan, where poverty is spreading and political empowerment is a distant dream, the police are becoming more brutal than ever.” He added that cases of police brutality and torture remained a serious problem in Pakistan and one demanding greater attention from the authorities. “In a country of 140 million, an organisation such as ours can pursue hundreds of cases and view them merely as a sample. The number of victims of police atrocities in Pakistan is undoubtedly in the thousands.” According to an HRCP report released in February, highlighting 100 reported cases of torture in custody, the problem remains endemic. Since police continue to rely on torture as the principal tool in investigating crime while the incidence of crime continues to rise, the number of torture cases is undoubtedly increasing. Moreover, the impression that a large number of incidents of torture cases go unreported cannot be dispelled. Even when some victims win reprieve through the intervention of the courts, they are often reluctant to publicise their ordeal for fear of reprisals by the police, the report said. Particularly disturbing for rights activists such as Khattak is the institutionalised nature of torture in Pakistan. The report described one facility operated by the Pakistani criminal investigation agency (CIA) in the southern city of Karachi, where 10 small lock-ups were found. The five by eight-foot square rooms had been sectioned off into smaller rooms barely adequate to accommodate one or two people at a time. In two of these cells, clasps, shackles and chains were fixed to the walls, giving the impression that persons detained there were chained. Up to August and September 1999, these rooms were used as cells to detain important suspects, some of them political. The report said if more senior police officers countrywide were to look into such cells where detainees were “interrogated”, they would find the same clasps, shackles and chains in many of them - obviously to cater for third-degree methods. The existence of torture cells at police stations, according to the report, proves two things: firstly, that torture has been institutionalised and secondly that its use to extract confessions is known by the highest authorities. Ansar Burney, head of the Ansar Burney Welfare Trust (ABWT), a Karachi-based NGO working against violations of civil liberties, injustices and discrimination, told IRIN: “Police brutality is the worst kind of brutality in Pakistan today. Every day we are receiving such complaints, and the number is rising daily.” According to Burney, 80 percent of prisoners incarcerated in Pakistani jails today are poor and innocent, and have been imprisoned after confessing to crimes they did not commit. “It is very difficult for innocent or poor people to go up against the police. People know that if they go to the courts they will not get justice. Everyone in Pakistan is afraid of the police - including the courts.” Poor people with little or no legal recourse are the most vulnerable to police brutality. On 24 April 2000, 30 year-old Jan Mohammad was allegedly murdered by Karachi police. According to a statement by his family, Jan and his cousin, Khan Mohammad, were arrested on trumped-up theft charges. Confined in a moving police van, they were repeatedly beaten and relieved of their money, after which they were thrown out of the vehicle. Jan Mohammad suffered serious head injuries and died. According to the ABWT, senior police officials ensured that no postmortem on the deceased was conducted. Moreover, despite numerous petitions to senior government officials, including the chief executive, General Pervez Musharraf, as well as a police investigation, none of the police officers named had ever been charged, Burney said. Not all police brutality cases remain unpunished, however. On 10 March, Shahid Shinwari, a 20 year-old student in Peshawar, was beaten by police in the local Hayatabad police station after objecting to an arbitrary body search in the marketplace. There he was stripped to the waist and beaten by three policemen for 20 minutes before collapsing. “In Pakistan, police can stop you, search your body, demand your identification documents and, in some cases, torture you,” Shinwari told IRIN. “Police brutality is a reality in Pakistan. If you have money, you are safe; otherwise, you are at risk.” During his incarceration, the Hayatabad Youth Forum, a local youth group he belonged to, succeeded in getting him released, and after pressing local authorities and a petition to the army, the officer responsible for the beating was suspended. While pleased with their success, the other members of the group admit such cases are rare. Moeed Khan, one group member, told IRIN: “The police have always been used as a means to achieve vested interests by the social political leadership of Pakistan, and this needs to be changed.” Such feelings were echoed by a US State Department report on human rights practices in Pakistan, issued in February. Describing Pakistan’s human rights record as poor, the report said police had committed numerous extrajudicial killings and abused and raped citizens. “While officers responsible for such abuses sometimes were transferred or suspended for their actions, no officer has been convicted, and very few have been arrested.” It added: “In general, police continued to commit serious abuses with impunity.” According to the report, human rights watchdog Amnesty International estimated that at least 100 people died as a result of police torture each year. While human rights groups and activists continue to press the government for stronger action on issues of police brutality, the case of Wajid Ali remains unchanged, and no charges have ever been brought to bear against the eight officers involved, leaving most Pakistanis with the same question as Wajid Ali asked: “Where is justice?”