Click image for larger.The New York Times (USA)
Tuesday 13 November 2007
In Interview, Musharraf
Defends Rule by Decree
by Carlotta Gall, David Rohde and Jane Perlez
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, November 13 -- The president of Pakistan, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, vigorously defended his declaration of emergency rule in a 40-minute interview, insisting that it would not interfere with the holding of free and fair elections.
"The emergency is to ensure elections go in an undisturbed manner," the president of Pakistan, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, said in an interview with The New York Times today.
He defended the decree issued 10 days ago that scrapped the Constitution, dismissed the Supreme Court and resulted in the arrests of 2,500 opposition party workers, lawyers and human rights advocates, and rejected an appeal by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to lift emergency rule.
"I totally disagree with her," General Musharraf said in an interview with The New York Times at the presidential building here on Tuesday. "The emergency is to ensure elections go in an undisturbed manner."
General Musharraf said the decree was justified because the Supreme Court had meddled in politics, specifically the validity of his re-election, and because of the serious threat from terrorists.
In the interview General Musharraf was critical of the opposition leader, Benazir Bhutto, saying she was confrontational and would be difficult to work with.
General Musharraf complained about her conduct since her return a month ago, saying: "You come here on supposedly on a reconciliatory mode, and right before you land, you’re on a confrontationist mode. I am afraid this is producing negative vibes, negative optics."
In the interview, the general, dressed in a gray suit and blue tie, described Pakistan as suffering from a "disturbed terrorist environment."
"I don’t know, I don’t know," he said when asked when the emergency rule would end. "We need to see the environment."
He refused to say when he would step down as army leader and become a civilian president, a demand that President Bush has urged publicly and also did privately in a telephone call last week. "It will happen soon," he said of giving up the military post.
The general, who has been backed with more than $10 billion by the Bush administration, most of it for the military, asked for even more support, and more patience.
The administration has called the general the best bet to fight against Al Qaeda and Islamic militants but has also complained that the Pakistani military has been sporadic and often ineffective.
In the interview, General Musharraf said the Pakistani army had limited resources in taking on the fight.
"Ten days back, of 20 Cobra helicopters, we have only one that was serviceable," he said. "We need more support."
But he said the army had regrouped in northern and southern Waziristan, where the army faced the strongest challenge from the militants who he called a "vicious enemy."
"Now wherever the disturbance, we will strike very very strongly," he said. Since imposing the emergency rule, Washington has pressed the general to lift it.
The United States Embassy confirmed today that the envoy it was sending to press General Musharraf to end emergency rule was Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte, who is expected to arrive in Islamabad at the end of the week.
Last week, Mr. Negroponte told [the U.S.] Congress that the general was "indispensable" as an ally in the fight against terror.
Before he imposed the emergency rule, General Musharraf had been expected to become a civilian president this Thursday.
Ms. Bhutto remained under house arrest, confined by police barricades in a house in Lahore after the government said she could not lead a protest rally from Lahore to Islamabad.
At another point, General Musharraf said Ms. Bhutto was under house arrest for seven days because she had accused the chief minister of the province of Punjab, Chaudhry Pervez Elahi, of plotting against her.
Thus Ms. Bhutto was grounded to prevent an incident that she could then blame on the government, he said.
Ms. Bhutto’s plan for her party members to participate in a "caravan" across the Punjab was "a preposterous thing to do."
Gen. Musharraf questioned Ms. Bhutto’s popularity, and at one point scanned an Op-Ed article she recently wrote for The Times that he had brought with him to the interview.
In reaction to her claim that she would sweep elections, the general said: "Let’s start the elections and let’s see whether she wins," he said, at another point. "Constitutionally today she has been prime minister twice, what about the third time? She is not legally allowed, she is not constitutionally allowed. Why are we taking things for granted?" Earlier in his regime, General Musharraf passed a law forbidding a Prime Minister serving more than two terms, a rule that forbids Ms. Bhutto and another opponent, former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.
Stepping up her rhetoric against Mr. Musharraf, Ms. Bhutto said today he should resign. The President replied in the interview that "she has no right" to ask.
General Musharraf, who has been criticized for being isolated inside the cocoon of the presidency, insisted he was in touch with the mood of Pakistanis, and said he believed emergency rule was popular.
Based on information from "several organizations," and feedback from politicians and friends, he said: "I know what they feel about the media, I know what they feel about the emergency when all these suicide bombings were taking place," he said of the views of the Pakistani people.
"Their view is why have I done it so late."
Western governments and Western media, he said, misread Ms. Bhutto’s support because they placed too much emphasis on the significance of human rights advocates in Pakistan.
"You go and meet human rights activists," he challenged his interviewers. "Ninety percent of them may have never cast their votes. They sleep on the day of elections."
General Musharraf said nearly a dozen independent news television stations that had been closed under the emergency decree would be allowed to re-open if they agreed to a government code of conduct.
Asked why a human rights advocate, Asma Jehangir, who heads the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, had been arrested when she attended a meeting at the commission’s headquarters on the first day of emergency rule, he replied: "Because she was agitating and trying to disturb the peace."
He called Ms. Jehangir, the leading human rights advocate in Pakistan and one of the first women lawyers, "quite an unbalanced character."
General Musharraf criticized Ms. Jehangir for being too ambitious in her agenda on how to achieve better rights for women.
Pakistani women deserved more opportunities, and he cited his own legislation that amended the laws to protect women against accusations of rape and adultery.
But Ms. Jehangir, he said, wanted to go too fast, and would therefore fail.
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Asma Jahangir
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Asma Jilani Jahangir (born 1952 in Lahore) is a Pakistani lawyer and human rights activist.
She has been the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief since 2004 (first attached to the former Commission on Human Rights, now to the Human Rights Council). Previously, she served as the UN Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Arbitrary and Summary Executions.
Born into a prosperous family with a history of activism (her father, Malik Jilani, was a former colonel in the Pakistan Army, entered politics upon retirement and spent time in jail and under house arrest for opposing military dictatorships), Jahangir herself became involved at a young age in protests against the military regime in Pakistan. She completed her law degree in 1978.
She cut her teeth during protests against the Hudood Ordinance put in place as part of Gen. Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq's Islamization program in Pakistan. She is a founding member of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, and has served as Secretary-General and later Chair of the organization.
In 1980, Asma Jahangir and her sister, Hina Jilani, got together with few fellow activists and lawyers and formed the first law firm established by women in Pakistan. They also helped form the Women's Action Forum (WAF) in the same year. The first WAF demonstration was in 1983 when some 25-50 women took to the streets protesting the famous Safia Bibi case. Safia, a young blind girl, had been raped yet had ended up in jail on the charge of zina. "We (their law firm) had been given a lot of cases by the advocate general and the moment this demonstration came to light, the cases were taken away from us." Asma recalls. [1]
In 1995, Jahangir received the Martin Ennals Award for Human Rights Defenders.
In her capacity as a UN official, Jahangir was in Pakistan when a state of emergency was declared by President Pervez Musharraf. On November 5, 2007, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour indicated that Jahangir was among the judicial and political officials detained by the Musharraf government. [2]
On November 5, 2007, The Economist reported that: "Over 500 lawyers, opposition politicians and human rights activists have been arrested. They include Asma Jahangir, boss of the country’s human-rights commission and a former UN special rapporteur. In an e-mail from house arrest, where she has been placed for 90 days, Ms Jahangir regretted that General Musharraf had "lost his marbles." (see:
http://www.economist.com/world/asia/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10088419)
Personal life
She has a son and two daughters. Sulema Jahangir, her daughter, is a lawyer.
External links
* Profile of Asma Jahangir
* News Report on appointment as Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief
* UN Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief
* Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP)
* Time Magazine profile
References
1. ^ Dawn-The Reviewer, April 2, 1998, "A ray of hope"
2. ^ UN's top rights official voices alarm at imposition of state of emergency. United Nations (2007-11-05). Retrieved on 2007-11-05.
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