The International Campaign to Restore Democracy in Pakistan Open Letter to General Kiayni

General Kiyani Sahib,The International Campaign to Restore Democracy in Pakistan applauds your February 13th decision to recall all military officers from Pakistan’s civil departments. Pakistan’s bourgeoning civil society will be strengthened through this brave reversal of your predecessor’ s heavy-handed and dictatorial imposition of the military in civilian affairs. Our men in uniform were pledged to defend Pakistan’s citizens and its Constitution. Instead, President Pervaiz Musharraf’s domestic policy had forced them to make the unnatural choice between doin their job and defending their country or deferring to their chief’s decision to hold civil society and the Constitution hostage at the barrel of a gunHowever, our work to restore democratic political participation in Pakistan has only begun. A majority of Pakistan’s judiciary was dismissed on November 3rd when President Musharraf imposed martial law in the guise of emergency." On November 13th, Pakistan’s Supreme Court was due to hear the
cases of 485 victims of enforced disappearance over the past six years. Many of these had returned with horror stories from detainment centers around the world, including the one in Guantanamo Bay.Cases of enforced disappearance are not unique to Pakistan. This problem has been created through a global regime of inter-state paranoia, government’s defiance of key principles of the Rule of Law, cash-payments made to mercenary kidnappers, intelligence forces that are held accountable to
neither the judiciary nor the executive, and covert foreign operations that flout state-sovereignty and government’s accountability to its own people.This regime holds sway over civil society from the war-zones of Columbia to Al-Anbar, Iraq, from Karachi to the streets of Brooklyn, New York. Its agents abduct people in broad day light and scuttle them across the globe to
hold them without charge in unspeakable places: Guantanamo, Bagram,Kandahar,Consequently, our campaign to restore missing persons to their families is a global effort. We have developed global partnerships and carried our consultations with the Bar Human Rights Committee of England and Wales, the
Pakistan Human Rights Commission, the International Action Center, local and regional chapters of the US National Lawyers Guild, the American Bar Association, and countless others. Thanks to the courage of members of the international media in continuing day-by-day coverage the social and political upheavals in Pakistan, our partners and supporters are demonstrably poised to seize this historic opportunity to help the vibrant,multi-ethnic fabric of Pakistani civil society secure for itself the hues of
democratic participation, pluralism, and peace for all its citizens.We demand the release of all those who have been abducted and detained
without charge by the military and the intelligence agencies under your command. The families of victims of enforced disappearances are demanding that the COAS’s office issue a list of the names and charges of all Pakistanis held under extrajudicial detainment on account of actions taken
by the army and intelligence forces under his command. In the weeks before March 15th, the deadline announced for the release of the names and charges of all detainees, the International Campaign to Restore Democracy in Pakistan will investigate the evidence against all individuals associatedwith the government of Pakistan who may have authorized and carried out
these abductions.The campaign will also consult with its partners in the United States, the
United Kingdom, and Pakistan to develop a strategy to take immediate legal action against all parties responsible for these disappearances if no response is received from your office by March 15th.