PKLeaks 30.0: Preventive Detention of another suspect under the Security of Pakistan Act, 1952

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Umar Saeed Khan, another normal citizen has fallen victim to the dangers of preventive detention regime, thus verifying its potential to be used as a tool to clamp down on fundamental rights. The victim has been charged for working as a facilitator for Hostile Intelligence Agencies and involvement in spotting Armed Forces Personnel through online platforms. Thus, ordered to be detained for a period of three years. Background checks of the victim revealed that he belongs to a humble background and worked as Tube well operator at Bahria Town Rawalpindi.

This detention is by many means reminiscent to a statement by our official to Bashir Azeem, the 76-year-old secretary-general of the Baloch Republican Party, during his unacknowledged detention, April 2010 which goes like this “Even if the president or chief justice tells us to release you, we won’t. We can torture you, or kill you, or keep you for years at our will. It is only the Army chief and the [intelligence] chief that we obey.”

What is striking here is that, Article 10 of our Constitution allows parliament to make preventive detention laws during peacetime on innumerable grounds. Pursuant to Article 10, our parliament has passed extraordinarily repressive laws allowing individuals to be detained at undisclosed locations, without access to family or lawyers, thus putting them at risk of enforced disappearance, torture and ill-treatment.

Subsequent military and civilian governments in our country have routinely used these draconian means for gaining political mileage including silencing and intimidating critics and opponents, justifying the practice, on the so-called grounds of security and order.

Several victims of this misuse include activists belonging to nationalist and separatist movements; members of communist parties; political opponents of governments in power; human rights defenders; and more recently, ‘terrorism’ suspects. This abuse has seriously undermined the enjoyment of fundamental rights such as freedom of expression, freedom of association and the right to political participation in our country.

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