Living in an age of hyper-connectivity, news about things happening in one part of the world travels within seconds to the other part. France is often in the news in Pakistan, thanks to the frequent controversial religious publications of Charlie Hebdo, a weekly satirical magazine. While Paris dubs those controversial publications as an exercise of freedom of expression, it has always ignited the ire of Pakistanis. It also has ended up in violent protests, claiming several precious human lives and heavily damaging public properties. The Tehreek-i-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) has had a leading role in those episodes. Again, France is a buzzword this week on social media. Yet, this time around, it is for a different reason. To make the readers have a full sense of what happened, I deem it important to shed light on the entire scene. On Monday, a video went viral on social media, in which former Chief of Army Staff (COAS) of Pakistan, Qamar Javed Bajwa, could be seen sitting beside his partner in front of a sophisticated building in the Annecy City of France. A man believed to be an Afghani national approached him and started abusing him. He also had his camera fixed on him. In response, Mr Bajwa warned: “Stop making video … else I will call the police.”
The rule of law looks good on paper. Those with power enjoy impunity.
Despite the warning, the angry man continued to utter inappropriate words and regretted: “If the police were not around, I would beat you up.” This weird scene started trending on social media with various hashtags. As I write this piece, there are over 56K tweets with only one hashtag I noticed. Different people are sharing different opinions. Some are expressing sympathy with the former soldier by taking the act of that man to exception while others are trying to make the most of this opportunity by making internet memes. I wasted nearly half an hour scrolling and watching this stuff. Eventually, I started viewing the scene through the prism of policing. Here the appealing part of this article begins. That the ex-COAS warned he would call the police, as well as the response of the other man, shows how strong the rule of law is there. Now, imagine a similar scene on Land of the Pure. Here, even the police are unsafe. The rule of law looks good on paper. Those with power enjoy impunity. There have been incidents that well repudiate the notion that everyone is equal before the law. All of them cannot be quoted here. A few of them happened in the near past, which almost everyone having access to social media may remember. Of them, the ugly episode of Kernal Ki Biwi is still fresh in the minds of many. In May 2020, a woman, who identified herself as the wife of a serving military officer, abundantly misbehaved and abused an on-duty police officer. Similarly, Lady Constable Faiza Nawaz had to resign after being abused and slapped by a lawyer in Ferozwala in Punjab. Another video made rounds on social media most recently, in which a judge was questioning, and shouting at, police personnel as to why his vehicle was stopped. He said that he was a judge and that now he would hold the court’s proceedings right on the road he had been stopped at. These incidents are the tip of the iceberg happening in Pakistan every day that do not get captured on camera. Early this year, a Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) of traffic police was manhandled by a woman in an area of Karachi simply for stopping her car. Hardly can one forget the words of that enraged woman: “You don’t know who I am, my brother is the commander and I’m calling him out here.” If so is the case with police, it requires no explanation of how easily can a powerful individual ill-treat common citizens with impunity in Pakistan. Countries perform well on the Rule of Law Index (RLI) of the World Justice Project because they have a strong criminal justice system. Their police are powerful enough to act against anyone violating the law. Pakistan, unfortunately, has a miserably failed criminal justice system. It is for this reason alone that it performs poorly on RLI. In 2022, Pakistan was ranked 129 out of 140 in RLI. The absence of the rule of law gradually erodes the trust of citizens in state institutions. Let’s respect laws in our country with the same spirit as we do in other countries.
The writer is a police officer with an interest in local social issues and international affairs. He tweets @Numanbacha20.