Muhammad Yasir Kayani
LAW is one of the great healing professions. While medicine heals the body, religion heals the soul, law heals the societal rifts and so a lawyer helps build a peaceful society. Today, the question that haunts our minds is whether this is the Pakistan that was dreamt by our founding fathers wherein the noble profession they adopted that is bestowing freedom, democratic norms, security and justice to the masses is now breathing in an atmosphere wherein its law protectors have to face threats to their life and liberty? I believe the answer will appear in the negative. Being a lawyer in a country like Pakistan, I myself have observed how much the life of a practising lawyer has associated with acute risks of death threats and violence on a daily basis. Over the past few decades, lawyers in Pakistan have been subjected to acts of mass terrorism, murder, attempted murder, assaults, (death) threats, contempt proceedings, harassment and intimidation as well as judicial harassment and torture in detention, merely for engaging in their professional duties as lawyers.
Particularly, within last few weeks, the gut-wrenching instances of murder of lawyers and violence against them have become common place and are escalating unchecked on a daily basis. Within a span of few days, incidents of successive target killing of more than five advocates and murder attacks on many others were witnessed that left the legal fraternity that always strives for the rule of law and supremacy of the Constitution in great shock. All the Bar Councils and Bar Associations of the country came to fore instantly to condemn these brutal attacks on legal community members and expressed grave concern on the miserably failed status of law enforcement agencies and fragile governance of the Government to check such terrorist incidents against the protectors of rule of law and supremacy of the Constitution, and also demanded of the Government to immediately arrest the culprits of target killing of the deceased advocates and try them in anti-terrorism courts for awarding exemplary punishment.
As was happened in 2019, when the protest was staged by lawyers’ community against the malicious acts of medical staff that later turned violent though unfortunately, the government started to seriously consider bringing amendments to the Legal Practitioners and Bar Councils (Amendment) Act, 2019, to ensure peaceful environment in the legal profession and judicial proceedings by preventing incidents of protests turning into violent activities by lawyers. The amendments, which the government was considering, were through the introduction of sub-section 6 in Section 41 of the Legal Practitioners and Bar Councils (Amendment) Act, 2019. The amendments proposed cancelling the licence of a legal practitioner for life if he/she indulges in physical violence against any person. They also suggest cancellation of the licence for life if a lawyer is involved in cheating, fraud, forgery, false affidavits or deliberate concealment of facts. However, the move was rejected outright by PBC dubbed the attempt as a malicious onslaught to gag and silence the freedom of expression by delegitimizing the 70-year-long historic role played by the lawyer’s community for strengthening constitutionalism, democracy and the rule of law.
Keeping in view the aforementioned abrupt move of the government against the legal community at that time, the Bar Councils and Bar Associations are now demanding such a prompt action from the government to take the matter into grave consideration and bring a solid mechanism to eradicate these terrorist acts continuously being committed against the legal fraternity. Even in India, when the legal community faced such lethal threats and activities, they staged protests and forced the government to bring Advocates Protection Act 2019 whose draft has been prepared so that lawyers can carry out their duties without fear, whereas the proposed legislation envisages stricter punishment for threats or attacks on lawyers while discharging their duties. Also, the protection of lawyers and the legal profession at large has been recognized by the international legal community as a critical issue and is manifest in the creation of the UN Special Rapporteur on the Independence of Judges and Lawyers. As in June 2017, the UN Human Rights Council passed an important resolution in its 35th session regarding protection and independence of the judges, lawyers, prosecutors and other court officials.
This calls for the State to take proper measures by way of legislation, ordinances or other mechanisms which are available to the government for the protection of legal practitioners. Legislation in this regard should include provisions for stricter punishment for the acts concerned and should also ensure safety of the stakeholders involved. It is proposed that the murder of any lawyer is an instance of terrorism and undercuts process of administration of justice and should be treated as such and stamped out with utmost prejudiced and pursued proactively by the legal community and appropriate amendments in law be made to make the same an act of terrorism. Further, the proposed legislation should also cover maintenance and protection of their families from these acts as it is also seen that the life of families of advocates is also put under high threat in such situations.
The same is essential for the protection of not only the family members of the deceased lawyer but also for each practising lawyer and members of this Association. Moreover, a high-powered Standing Committee of the Bar and its officers be formed to pursue and oversee any and all instances of murder of lawyers and perform functions, including legal representation, coordination with authorities and to offer all manners of assistance to the survivors of the deceased and to periodically report back on their progress to the Cabinet which shall put the same before the House for its information and further action. Additionally, Police Department must cooperate sincerely and its high authorities must constitute a team to investigate all the recent gut-wrenching incidents against the lawyers on an immediate basis. The threats that lawyers face in Pakistan are uncalled-for and harrowing in nature and silence and inaction of the government over such heinous incidents is quite worrisome. Rather, such incidents on legal community, in particular, deconstruct the weak governance of the government and portray a horrible picture to the world at large. Thus, Government should sooner come out from brown study and took realistic steps to protect and honour the noble profession of our founding fathers.
—The writer is Lecturer-in-Law at PU Jhelum Campus.
