Pakistan passes antiterrorism bill

Islamabad: Pakistan’s National Assembly on Tuesday passed an antiterrorism bill, which the opposition said contains draconian provisions such as empowering law enforcing agencies to shoot suspects at sight and detain them for up to 90 days without disclosing the place of detention.

Opposition lawmakers protested and tore copies of the draft but failed to block the “Protection of Pakistan Bill”, which the government — based on required numbers — passed in the 342-member lower house of the parliament late on Monday.

The bill is based on a presidential ordinance which is already in force but is due to lapse by June after completion of its assembly-extended life.

It will now be transmitted to the Senate, the 100-member upper house, where the opposition is in the majority and is likely to press for incorporation into the bill a raft of amendments that the government brushed aside in the National Assembly.

Responding to criticism of the bills, Minister of State and Frontier Regions, Abdul Qader Baloch, said the law was needed to save the country from terrorism and sectarian violence.

“The country is bleeding. We need to protect lives and property of our people and this needs a protective law,” he said.

He said that the opponents of the bill were criticising it “knowing well that this wave of terrorism has claimed the lives of 40,000 Pakistanis” in more than a decade.

“We are not enacting a law to kill the people. The country is bleeding and the government wants to protect the innocent people from the tyranny of extremists,” Baloch said.

“Today people are talking of separate countries and we are opposing a law meant for securing the country and its people from the clutches of terrorism and extremism.”

He however stated that if this law can be made better, it should be done but it should not be opposed out rightly.

The government of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif is currently engaged in a slow-moving peace dialogue with the outlawed Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan.

The main opposition Pakistan People’s Party leader Bilawal Bhutto Zardari and many others blame the government for pursuing a policy of appeasement towards militants instead of establishing its writ and eliminating militant outfits.

TTP, an umbrella oranisation of dozens of militant groups, is based in the semi-autonomous tribal region in the northwest along the border with Afghanistan.

A TTP-government ceasefire is effective at present while the two sides are in the process of deciding a venue and date for a second round of direct talks between them.

In the southwest, Balochistan province is beset by a long-running low-scale separatist insurgency involving militant groups from the ethnic Baloch community. The government says it wants to resolve the problem in the mineral-rich province through talks with estranged Baloch brethren.