Strong-arm surveillance

When Rohinton Mistry, the Indian writer currently based in Canada, discovered during a book tour of the US last summer that his beard and general appearance attracted more than their fair share of attention from the airport security staff, he decided to call off the tour. Ejaz Haider, senior Pakistani journalist and a research scholar at the Brookings Institution, now feels similarly after his brief and brutish encounter with USA8217;s Immigration and Naturalization Service INS.

While there are conflicting reports on what actually happened, an American Justice Department official claims that the account that appeared in the media was exaggerated. But we have it on the authority of noted South Asian scholar Stephen Cohen that the treatment meted out to Haider was clearly unacceptable. As Cohen put it, while he had occasion many a time to plead with Pakistani authorities to release journalists in that country 8212; and Haider8217;s colleague Najam Sethi8217;s detention under the Nawaz Sharif8217;s dispensation is possibly a case in point 8212; he never imagined that he would have to do the same for a Pakistani journalist in his own country.

The point is that while every government may reserve for itself the right to take measures that it believes are essential for its security, it must ensure that its administration of them is fair and sensitive to the human rights of those it chooses to target. As Edmund Burke stated so many years ago, 8220;There is but one law for all, namely, that law which governs all law8230; the law of humanity.8221;

Of course, the controversy is being played out against the backdrop of Pakistan8217;s plea to the US Justice Department that its nationals be exempted from being forced to register with the INS, while in the US. That plea has been rejected and US Attorney General John Ashcroft has conveyed this in no uncertain terms to Pakistan.

He has, however, said that he is requesting the INS to treat all Pakistani nationals with dignity and respect. How Ashcroft8217;s assurances translate on the ground, at the level of every officer and clerk, is what would matter eventually.