Daily Times

When people die in legal custody the public has a vital interest in knowing who they were and how they died. It is a matter of basic transparency and accountability to prevent abuses from going on behind the closed gates of prisons and other detention centres. But the Rangers until instructed by Chief of Army Staff (COAS) General Raheel Sharif felt bound by no such need for openness. Rather far from it, when the body of Aftab Ahmed, coordinator of senior Muttahida Qaumi Movement leader Dr Farooq Sattar was found dead by doctors in the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre under controversial circumstances. A reluctant admission was seen only when pictures of Ahmed’s tortured body were being shown on social media.

This is an instance of an appalling degree of unaccountability. It calls to mind people who disappeared into Soviet gulags, never to be heard from again. Rangers’ tough policy toward unlawful activities and terrorism should not extend to covering up details when people die in their custody. By and large, the public was left in the dark, waiting for more information to appear on social media. This is unacceptable. Rangers have a duty to account for the lives of people they detain. In this case that accountability wasn’t there. True to the cause, General Sharif and Director General Rangers Major General Bilal Akber has ordered an inquiry and reassured “justice must be done.” That would spare compromising any investigation.

General Sharif sees value in an inquiry into the death of Ahmed, and how the death occured in custody of Rangers. Undoubtedly, Rangers have implemented the COAS’s recommendations, but whether such a move would temper the ‘tough on crime’ instincts of Rangers and government in particular is doubtful. It is not the defiance of the instructions that would be the problem; it is the enduring belief that locking more and more people up is going to solve the problems of criminal offences and make the country safer, despite decades of evidence that shows the absolute opposite. Section 11E of the Anti-Terrorism Act 1997, which allows for the detention of suspects for up to 90 days, takes away judicial authority in the matter entirely and demands only that the court be informed of each detention. Another step forward would be to accede to calls from human rights organisations, and commit to open and transparent justice, and invest more in early intervention, prevention and diversion strategies.

The sudden death of Ahmed raises some troubling questions, starting with the fact that federal law still does not require law-enforcing officials to publicly disclose every such death. Surely, there is nothing a government in a democratic society does on our behalf that is more serious or sensitive than to deprive people of their freedom. Whenever someone who is taken into custody dies while in lock-up, the death should become public information as soon as the person’s family is notified. Ironically, federal government amasses statistics on a wide range of topics. How many people travelled on the motorway in a year? How many people sat in the metro? How many acres of corn are planted in a given year? It Is all tracked. But one thing government does not keep track of is how often law enforcing agencies kill civilians. Death in custody is a serious judicial matter and should be considered for discussion in the parliament for bringing forth ‘death in custody reporting act’ to address this very serious issue. If passed, this law would make it mandatory for provincial and federal law enforcement agencies to report on such deaths for trials and tribulations.

Police and Rangers are crucial in our communities; they play a vital role in enforcing laws and keeping the public safe. But based on persistent reports of excessive force, it is clear that some officers use aggressive tactics too quickly, are susceptible to bias in confronting detainees and, in some cases, wind up killing unarmed people who posed no existential threat, and in some cases were committing no crimes. Prompt disclosure of deaths in custody can ensure a high level of accountability required to maintain public confidence in a justice system where we can be confident that people aren’t simply ‘disappearing or dying without an identified cause’. It is not good enough for law enforcement agencies to suggest that it doesn’t issue news releases about in-custody deaths unless staff suspects some foul play, or there is some threat to public safety. Whether it is through natural causes, accident, suicide or homicide, it is imperative that all deaths in custody are disclosed to the public. In the long run, this is the surest path to building and retaining public trust.

The inquiry ordered by the General Sharif may sound one note of caution. It may deliver a unique catalogue of the destruction of human rights, spirit and lives of people. It may examine a wide range of policies designed to avoid the failures of the past, and propose a blueprint for tackling the underlying causes of disintegration in our society today. But imagine if the inquiry held leads into a matter of national shame, and a five-volume report actually produced the headline indicators of that shame. Consider the public reaction if, after a year, the inquiry produced the report that lamented that the situation was now worse than when the inquiry was started. Contemplate the level of anger, outrage and despair, especially within the community covered by the report, if deaths every bit shocking as the one that triggered the inquiry were still taking place. Then consider the deeper, more disturbing truth: all of the above is accurate, yet the vast majority of victims are only vaguely aware of the grim reality, and most of the politicians representing them seem content with things as they are.

The writer is a professor of psychiatry and consultant forensic psychiatrist in the UK. He can be contacted at fawad_shifa@yahoo.com