Selective justice and the MQM

Justice is justice only when it is applied to all

In the last few weeks, the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) has seen the state come down hard on it. With arrests of MQM’s workers, search operations of the MQM headquarters and extracted statements from criminals makes it clear that the MQM is under siege. Let there be no doubt, if there are criminals among the MQM then they should be caught, prosecuted under a free trial and justly sentenced if found guilty.

However, the problem starts when there is selective justice and application of the law in the society. In this article, I am going to look at whether selective justice exists in our society and what are the harms to the society if it does.

First, let’s look at the existence of selective justice in Pakistan. To prove the premise of selective justice, we will need to show that the law of Pakistan is selectively applied in some cases and not others. So what are the facts? The first fact is that the state has arrested and besieged some of the MQM leaders under the allegations of killings in Karachi. The second fact is that the leaders of the Pakistan’s Peoples Party (PPP), Jamaat-e-Islami (JI), Awami National Party and the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), which have all been accused of killings and links with the terrorists, have had no legal action taken against them.

To analyse this further, let’s investigate various examples. Uzair Baloch, a notorious Lyari criminal, who was recently caught in the Middle East has confessed that the leaders of the PPP including Asif Ali Zardari, Zulfiqar Mirza, Qaim Ali Shah and Sharjeel Memon ordered him to kill MQM workers in particular and members of the Urdu speaking communities in general. And yet, there have been no proceedings against the PPP. Moreover, both the JI and PML-N have had links and have supported various terrorist organisations, including factions of the Tahreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). In fact, the leaders of the JI have praised leaders of the TTP several times. And again, there have been no legal proceeding against these two parties. The PML-N has also been accused of using state machinery to kill innocent people in Model Town, Lahore, and D Chowk, Islamabad. Again, there have been no legal proceedings against them. In fact, in a verdict of the Supreme Court of Pakistan, the court clearly stated that all political parties have militant wings and they must be disbanded. That verdict did not single out the MQM.

Furthermore, Mansoora (the headquarters of Jamaat-e-Islami) and Bilawal House (headquarters of the PPP) have allegedly seen a flurry of terrorist activities over the years — from protecting terrorists to directly giving them instructions. In fact, there have been several claims that terrorists that carried out various attacks, including attacks on the Sri Lankan cricket team in Pakistan and minorities, were hiding in and getting backing from Mansoora. Has there been a police raid on these two localities? No!

Given these facts, it would be hard for the government of Pakistan to deny the existence of selective justice in Pakistan. MQM’s leadership has been targeted by the state, but other political parties’ leadership with similar allegations have gone scot free.

Now let’s looks at the harms of the selective justice and why the society should care about it. Selective justice can destroy the fabric and solidarity of the society by alienating and marginalising factions of the society. As the MQM represents and is strongly backed by the Urdu speaking community of urban Sindh, selective justice against it is going to alienate the Urdu speaking communities and may even antagonise emotive against the government of the day.

This alienation is even more likely given the history of several massacres of the Urdu speaking communities under Ayub Khan, Zial-ul-Haq and the PPP and PML-N governments. Furthermore, distributive injustice in a significant manner has further fuelled a sense of alienation in the Urdu speaking community. The fact that the Urdu speaking communities generate most of Pakistan’s tax revenue and only get a fraction of that money back has long been a bone of contention. This distributive injustice was a prime reason why Pakistan lost Bangladesh in 1971. Regrettably, we have not learned from history.

Selective justice will also set a dangerous precedent in the society. Such measures would mean that the state can abuse the application of law for its own personal gains and victimise it political opponents. Unfortunately, in Pakistan, such precedents are actually the norm of the day.

One of the main pillars of every society is justice which makes it more important that all the stakeholders in the society take a balanced approach to the application of the law and more importantly address the issue of selective justice to make Pakistan a stronger federation. One of the foremost mechanisms to address distributive injustice would be to devolve power through localism by holding Local Government elections and by creating smaller provinces for the Urdu speaking, Seraiki and Hazara communities. This should be followed up by a just and equal distribution of state resources among the provinces.