Daily Times

On September 29, 2016, Saudi Arabia executed Amjad Hussein Ashraf Shah, a Pakistani national, for allegedly smuggling drugs into Jeddah. Shah’s execution brings the total number of Pakistanis Saudi Arabia has beheaded since 2014 on charges of drug trafficking to 42. There are over 2,390 Pakistanis imprisoned in Saudi jails, a significant number of whom being detained for similar charges and facing the same gruesome fate. However, while the Saudi government and media hail this spate of executions as a triumph of the kingdom’s war on drugs, people they have executed are not always the nefarious criminals they are made out to be. Instead, a majority of Pakistanis executed and imprisoned by Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries are helpless and hapless victims of drug trafficking rings who should be accorded sympathy and legal help rather being punished. While the phenomenon of poor men being forced into being drug mules is widely acknowledged in official circles, government of Pakistan seems to have abandoned its citizens to the whims of a foreign country.

The case of Asmat Hayat, a Pakistani executed in Saudi Arabia, can put a human face to this tragic trend. Hayat lived most of his life in a small, distant village in Punjab until he received what he thought was the lottery of a lifetime: a free trip to Saudi Arabia for an umrah. As happens in most of these cases, Hayat was approached by an Overseas Employment Promoter (OEP) who told Hayat of a rich Haji benefactor sponsoring the pilgrimage of pious but poor men. Hayat, like many others before and after him, became overwhelmed with excitement about visiting the holy lands, and jumped at the opportunity. After the OEP agent handled his visa and travel arrangements, Hayat bid farewell to his wife and children in 2009. It would be the last time they see each other.

Like many others facing the same predicament, the naive Hayat did not realise that he had been recruited by a vile nexus of travel agents and drug traffickers that targets impressionable men from smaller towns and villages with grandiose promises. Shockingly, these OEPs often hold licences from the Board of Investment and Oversees Employment. As is typical in most cases, right before his flight, the OEP agent manufactured an excuse to delay the departure and took Hayat and his brother to the house of the supposed benefactor. Once there, the two were beaten and tortured. Hayat was forced under duress to ingest opiates while his brother was held hostage to force his compliance. He was instructed to deliver the drugs to a local dealer upon landing. The nervous and traumatised Hayat, however, was arrested on arrival after a search at the airport. Soon after, he was tried in a court where he received no legal representation nor could he understand the language of the proceedings. Sentenced to death, Asmat Hayat spent six years on death row before being executed in August 2015.

Men like Hayat are double victims: firstly, of the criminal smuggling rings that go unprosecuted in Pakistan, and secondly, of a Saudi criminal justice system that lacks due process. After being detained, the local police tortures and forces the victims of drug smuggling rings to sign confessions of their guilt pre-written in Arabic. Once the detainees are put on trial, they are not entitled to free legal counsel or impartial translators. These lopsided trials, where the defendant is unable to present a defence, are concluded quickly with the highest penalty awarded. Furthermore, the families of detainees are never informed of their predicament; even after a Pakistani is executed, the families are not sent the bodies of their loved one.

While as citizens of Pakistan we cannot change the way Saudi Arabia operates, we need to hold our own government accountable for its apathy and repeated failures to secure the fundamental rights of its citizens abroad. To that end, the Justice Project Pakistan (JPP), a non-profit human rights law firm, sheds light on the plight of migrant workers and Pakistan government’s failures through a series of case studies, interviews and legal analyses in its recent publication entitled the Justice Bulletin. In December 2014, the JPP filed a petition in the Lahore High Court on behalf of the families of migrant workers facing execution. The aims of this ongoing case are to compel the Pakistani government to fulfil its duty to protect the rights of its citizens abroad and to provide them with legal assistance. However, through the proceedings of this case, an inconvenient truth has come to light: Pakistan does not have a codified consular policy located in one easily-distributed and authoritative document.

Consular assistance is the help and advice provided by the diplomatic agents of a country to their fellow citizens working or travelling in a foreign country. But as Pakistan has only issued diffused guidelines to its embassies and consulates abroad, which do not have defined mechanisms or responsibilities outlined, there is deferring of responsibility and bureaucratic inaction. Without an easily accessible and codified consular policy, the public has no way of knowing their rights and the officials themselves lack understanding of their roles. So we end up in the present situation where Pakistan, instead of providing relief to its distressed citizens, seems to have given up on them.

Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are both bound by the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, under which Saudi Arabia has to share information on Pakistani prisoners with Pakistan, while Pakistan is obliged to take up the cases of its citizens imprisoned abroad. If the Pakistani government needs inspiration to stand up for its citizens, it does not need to look beyond the South and Southeast Asian region. India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Indonesia and Philippines have all in recent years taken stern action to protect the rights of their citizens working or travelling in Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries. Moreover, interviews of former or current Pakistani prisoners in Saudi Arabia conducted by the JPP have confirmed that citizens of these countries received regular visits and assistance from their respective consulates.

In light of these realities, it is incumbent on the government of Pakistan to take corrective action. The first and most important action it should take is to formulate and implement a uniform consular policy to support all Pakistanis imprisoned abroad. Secondly, it has to make forceful representation to secure the due process and fundamental rights of those Pakistanis imminently facing execution in Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries. On the domestic front, lack of prosecution of drug and human trafficking rings needs to be immediately addressed. Those responsible for entrapment and forced narcotic smuggling should be identified and charged under relevant criminal laws. Finally, government has to review why so many Pakistanis get arrested in Saudi Arabia, which means restructuring the existing regulatory framework for emigration of Pakistani migrant workers.

Only by taking these necessary actions can Pakistan assert its status as an equal partner with Saudi Arabia in their enduring relationship, while salvaging the lives of thousands of Pakistani migrants facing horrible conditions in the Gulf countries.

The writer is an advocacy and policy officer at the Justice Project Pakistan. He can be reached at daniyal.yousaf@jpp.org.pk