Amnesty International has done well to bring it out that martial law in Pakistan, as it is now being implemented, is illegal in terms of the Supreme Court’s judgement in November 1977. The country’s highest judicial body had then ruled that martial law had a legal basis only so long as civil courts retained the right “to judge the validity of any act or action of the martial law authorities”. The civil courts have now lost such a right under General Zia-ul-Haq’s constitution (second amendment) order of October 16. And if martial law has lost its “legal basis”, so have the chief martial law administrator, that is, General Zia, and the set-up under him. This is not just a matter of deduction. For, while the Supreme Court had then validated the proclamation of martial law on July 5, 1977, only to the extent that this was “for a temporary period and for a specified objective” which was the “restoration of law and order and normalcy in the country and the earliest possible holding of free and fair elections”, General Zia has not only postponed the poll indefinitely and banned all political parties and political activities but also expounded the theory that democracy has no place in the Islamic order he is seeking to establish in Pakistan. Indeed, he has also said quite explicitly that martial law can last for 10 years.
Pakistan is, of course, not the only country in the world without law. There are scores of others where usurpers hold office and tyrannise over their peoples without let or hindrance. Pakistan is also not the only land without justice. There are other similarly unfortunate lands, some of them quite large like Brazil and Argentina and others with a long history of civilised behaviour like Czechoslovakia. But there is no other big country where the top elite is invited to witness and applaud barbaric punishments for relatively minor offences like prostitution, soliciting, procuring and stealing. Crowds have been collected in previous years in some Arab capitals to witness political executions but not to see ordinary people being flogged till they fall unconscious. Some other countries have laws similar to those now being enforced in Pakistan. But not one of them has resorted to them on the scale General Zia is doing. According to the officially controlled Pakistani press itself, 80 persons have been sentenced to be flogged since October 16. Reliable sources put the figure around 200 and there is no good reason to dispute it. But whatever the figure, Pakistan has joined the front rank of countries which violate human rights with a vengeance. It would have attracted the charge even if it had only arrested so many political activists as it has, the number running into several thousand. Flogging puts the charge beyond dispute. Western supporters of Pakistan owe it to themselves to do all they can to see to it that this ghastly business does not go on and on. Else they will have no moral right to criticise governments in the Soviet bloc and elsewhere for violation of human rights.
The Times of India, 7 November 1979