Balochistan: truth & reconciliation
By Dr Athar Osama
Dawn: October 6, 2006
IN a recent article, I had highlighted the need for the creation of a truth and provincial reconciliation commission to investigate the abuse (or lack of it) of inter-provincial relations in Pakistan. In the backdrop of events in Balochistan and the demand by the Baloch grand jirga for greater autonomy, the need for a major reassessment of inter-provincial relations in Pakistan is in order.
In this article, I intend to look at some of the relatively better known examples of truth commissions around the world and highlight how and what they achieved for their respective countries.
The idea of setting up a truth and reconciliation commission is not new. These are bodies established to research and report on human rights abuses over a certain period of time in a particular country or in relation to a particular conflict. However, their use is not always limited and may encompass other violations of law and human rights as well.
The concept behind a truth commission is that of “restorative justice”, which differs from the customary adversarial and retributive justice. The truth and reconciliation process seeks to heal relations between opposing sides by uncovering all pertinent facts, distinguishing the truth from lies, and allowing for acknowledgment, appropriate public mourning, forgiveness and healing. The process promotes the belief that confronting the past is necessary for the successful transition from conflict and tension to peace and connectedness.
These commissions allow victims and alleged perpetrators to give evidence of abuses and provide an official forum to document their accounts and make recommendations on steps to prevent the recurrence of such abuses. They are created, vested with authority, sponsored and/or funded by governments, international organisations, or both.
They help create a process of listening and healing psychological wounds that may afflict the victims of injustice. Secondly, they often come up with a final report that documents the abuse, provides recommendations for compensating the aggrieved party and identifies the steps that must be taken to avoid the situation from recurring.
Over the last three decades, truth and reconciliation commissions have functioned in more than 30 countries with considerable degree of success. These include Argentina, Chile, Germany, Morocco, Peru, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Nigeria, South Korea and East Timor, the best known being in South Africa. The truth commission here was established after the era of apartheid. Anybody who felt they had been a victim of violence could come forward and be heard at the TRC.
The South African TRC’s hearings made international news and many sessions were broadcast on national television.
The TRC was a crucial component of the transition to full and free democracy in South Africa and, despite some flaws, is generally regarded as a model for subsequent truth commissions around the world.
It had the authority to not only listen to testimony and award reparations where necessary but also — in the spirit of healing and moving forward —awarding amnesties to those charged with atrocities during the apartheid. This was done as long as two conditions were met: the crimes were established as politically motivated and the whole truth was told by the person seeking amnesty. No one was exempted from being charged including members of the ruling African National Congress.
While there have been criticisms of the commission’s work, the public nature of its proceedings and its popularity led other countries to establish such commissions.
The Commission for Reception, Truth, and Reconciliation in East Timor is one such example. The idea was presented in 2000 at the Congress of the Timorese National Resistance. After a series of consultations with local communities and with the support of international agencies, legislation was adopted in 2001 to set up the commission.
The commission members were appointed through a selection panel that sought nominations from the local communities. Three hundred nominations were received from which a much smaller number was short-listed and interviewed and the names publicised within communities for comments. Finally, seven national commissioners took oath.
The commission is specifically charged with helping the East Timorese nation reconcile with its troubled past by investigating abuses between April 1974 and October 1999 and working with the aggrieved parties and alleged perpetrators to develop a mechanism for reconciliation. After more than two years of work, the commission delivered a 2,500-page report to the president of East Timor who has handed it over to the UN secretary-general as required by the commission’s founding legislation.
Apart from developing countries, truth commissions have also been established in developed countries. Germany, United States and South Korea are three examples.
The German commission was set up by members of the German parliament in March 1992 to investigate human rights violations under communist rule in East Germany from 1949 to 1989. It was charged with confronting the legacy of communist rule and helping bring all Germans together as a unified nation.
The United States’ first ever truth and reconciliation commission was set up in Greensboro, North Carolina, to deal with a particular instance of the community’s troubled past of racial violence.
The commission was set up to help Greensboro grasp the importance of having an accurate collective memory of how the events of Nov 3, 1979, happened and why. The events related to the killing of five people by members of the Ku Klux Klan and the American Nazi Party during a protest march. Seven respected individuals from the community were appointed through a democratic nomination and selection process to serve as commissioners. The commission’s civic engagement programme addressed the need to educate, inform and involve the public in truth-seeking, truth-telling and reconciliation.
What comes across in these examples is that truth and reconciliation commissions are an exercise in democracy that allow various parties in a conflict and the general public at large to seek and confront the truth about alleged injustices. They have been used extensively and effectively in investigating injustices over several decades as well as those pertaining to a single incident. They can be set up and empowered in various ways such as through legislative and executive action, citizen demand and through a mandate by international organisations.
Irrespective of how they are set up, they derive legitimacy from the people whose participation is required to make the whole exercise worthwhile. Finally, while the tasks that they face are tricky at best and highly contentious at worst, a genuine desire to know the truth and act upon it to avoid injustices from occurring in the future is a critical ingredient of success.
In the words of the Greensboro Commission’s report: “There comes a time in the life of every community (and nation) when it must look humbly and seriously into its past in order to provide the best possible foundation for moving into a future based on healing and hope.”
The truth commission model, applied successfully elsewhere around the world, can be followed in Pakistan to allow its people to confront their own troubled past of abuse of inter-provincial relations and avoid a repeat of the 1971 tragedy. If nothing else, it can help the nation address past grievances and move forward with unity, resolve and confidence.
The challenge remains: can we move beyond rhetoric and really establish a process to bring truth and transparency to inter-provincial relations? Are we capable of solving our problems in a systematic way without resorting to agitation and sabotage?
Although, this has never been done in Pakistan’s history, there is no reason why it can’t be done now. As someone once said, “a country that forgets its own history is condemned to repeat it.”
The writer is public a policy analyst based in Santa Monica, US.
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THE HISTORY OF MUSLIM MAJLIS-ITTEHADUL-MUSLIMEEN PARTY IN HYDERABAD AND ITS POWER
DOWN BUT NOT OUT CAN BE SAID RIGHTLY
The grip of the Majlis-e-ittehadul Muslimeen on the community remains strong, despite minor dents.
WITH A Member representing Hyderabad in the Lok Sabha, five members in the Andhra Pradesh Assembly, 40 corporators in Hyderabad and 95-plus members elected to various municipal bodies in Andhra Pradesh, the All-India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen is one of the foremost representatives of the city’s Muslims and the most powerful Muslim party in India and one can see the partys strenghth if it goes to Hyderabads Old city everywhere u look u can see MIM written on walls ,lightpoles and buildings leaving aside flags and posters of its Leadership. The Majlis has brought lot of development to the Old part of the city even after it is said it hasnt done anything by its opponents who are mostly Ex Majlis workers.
The Majlis was formed in 1927 “for educational and social uplift of Muslims”. But it articulated the position that “the ruler and throne (Nizam) are symbols of the political and cultural rights of the Muslim community… (and) this status must continue forever”.
The Majlis pitted itself against the Andhra Mahasabha and the communists who questioned the feudal order that sustained the Nizam’s rule. It also bitterly opposed the Arya Samaj, which gave social and cultural expression to the aspirations of the urban Hindu population in the Hyderabad State of those days.
By the mid-1940s, the Majlis had come to represent a remarkably aggressive and violent face of Muslim communal politics as it organised the razakars (volunteers) to defend the “independence” of this “Muslim” State from merger with the Indian Union.
According to historians, over 1,50,000 such `volunteers’ were organised by the Majlis for the Nizam State’s defence but they are remembered for unleashing unparalleled violence against Hindu populations, the communists and all those who opposed the Nizam’s “go it alone” policy. It is estimated that during the height of the razakar `agitation’, over 30,000 people had taken shelter in the Secunderabad cantonment alone to protect themselves from these `volunteers’.
But the razakars could do little against the Indian Army and did not even put up a fight. Kasim Rizvi, the Majlis leader, was imprisoned and the organisation banned in 1948. Rizvi was released in 1957 on the undertaking that he would leave for Pakistan in 48 hours. Before he left though, Rizvi met some of the erstwhile activists of the Majlis and passed on the presidentship to Abdul Wahed Owaisi, a famous lawyer and an Islamic scholar who also was jailed for nearly 10 months after he took over the Majlis leadership as the then govt wanted to abolish the Majlis party but Owaisi refused to do so and was seen as a person who had financially supported the party when it was a bankrupt and weak one after the Police Action in Hyderabad State.
Owaisi is credited with having “re-written” the Majlis constitution according to the provisions of the Indian Constitution and “the realities of Muslim minority in independent India”, according to a former journalist, Chander Srivastava. For the first decade-and-a-half after this “reinvention”, the Majlis remained, at best, a marginal player in Hyderabad politics and even though every election saw a rise in its vote share, it could not win more than one Assembly seat.
The 1970s saw an upswing in Majlis’ political fortunes. In 1969, it won back its party headquarters, Dar-us-Salaam — a sprawling 4.5-acre compound in the heart of the New City. It also won compensation which was used to set up an ITI on the premises and a women’s degree college in Nizamabad town. In 1976, Salahuddin Owaisi took over the presidentship of the Majlis after his father’s demise.
This started an important phase in the history of the Majlis as it continued expanding its educational institutions,Hospitals,Banks, including the first Muslim minority Engineering College and Medical College. Courses in MBA, MCA ,Nursing, Pharmacy and other professional degrees followed and now a daily newspaper known as Etemaad Daily. The 1970s were also a watershed in Majlis’ history as after a long period of 31 years, Hyderabad witnessed large-scale communal rioting in 1979. The Majlis came to the forefront in “defending” Muslim life and property Majlis workers could be seen at these moments defending the properties of Muslims in the wake of riots and these workers were very hard even for the police to control them even now it is a known fact that there are nearly about 2500 units of strong members who only act if there is a seirous threat to the Owaisi family and these members are under the direct orders of the Owaisi family which leads the Majlis party leaving aside thousands of workers and informers throughout the State and even outside the country far away till America and the Gulf countries.
Salahuddin Owaisi, also known as “Salar-e-Millat” (commander of the community), has repeatedly alleged in his speeches that the Indian state has “abandoned” the Muslims to their fate. Therefore, “Muslims should stand on their own feet, rather than look to the State for help’’, he argues.
This policy has been an unambiguous success in leveraging the Majlis today to its position of being practically the “sole spokesman” of the Muslims in Hyderabad and its environs.
Voting figures show this clearly. From 58,000 votes in the 1962 Lok Sabha elections for the Hyderabad seat, Majlis votes rose to 1,12,000 in 1980. The clear articulation of this “stand on one’s feet” policy in education and `protection’ during riots doubled its vote-share by 1984. Salahuddin Owaisi won the seat for the first time, polling 2.22 lakh votes. This vote-share doubled in the 1989 Lok Sabha elections to over four lakhs.
The Majlis has since continued its hold on the Hyderabad seat winning about five-and-a-half lakh votes each time.
Despite remarkable economic prosperity and negligible communal violence in the past decade, the hold of the Majlis on the Muslims of Hyderabad remains, despite minor dents. And despite widespread allegations of Majlis leaders having “made money”, most ordinary Muslims continue to support them because, as one bank executive put it “they represent our issues clearly and unambiguously’’. An old Historian Bakhtiyar khan says the Owaisi family was a rich family even before entering Politics and he says he had seen the late Majlis leader Abdul Wahed Owaisi in an American Buick car at a time when rarely cars were seen on Hyderabad Roads and the family had strong relations with the ersthwhile Nizams of Hyderabad and the Paighs even now the family is considered to be one of the richest familes in Hyderabad.
A university teacher says that the Majlis helped Muslims live with dignity and security at a time when they were under attack and even took the fear out of them after the Police action and adds that he has seen Majlis leaders in the front at times confronting with the Police and the Govt.
Asaduddin Owaisi, the articulate UK educated barrister son of Salahuddin Owaisi and Former leader of the Majlis’ Legislature party and now an MP himself who has travelled across the globe meeting world leaders and organizatons and even in war zones compares the Majlis to the Black Power movement of America.
The Majlis that emerged after 1957 is a completely different entity from its pre-independence edition, he says adding that comparisons with that bloody past are “misleading and mischievous”. “That Majlis was fighting for state power, while we have no such ambitions or illusions”.
He stoutly defends the need for “an independent political voice” for the minorities, which is willing to defend them and project their issues “firmly”.
“How can an independent articulation of minority interests and aspirations be termed communal,” he asks and contests any definition of democracy which questions the loyalty of minorities if they assert their independent political identity. “We are a threat not only to the BJP and Hindu communalism, but also to Muslim extremism,” Asaduddin claims. “By providing a legitimate political vent for Muslims to voice their aspirations and fears, we are preventing the rise of political extremism and religious obscurantism when the community is under unprecedented attack from Hindu communalists and the state’’. He can be seen in his speeches speaking against terrorism in the Country and says if the time arises Majlis will stand side by side in defending the Nation
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