The Drexel Law Review is pleased to announce a symposium issue focusing on law and policy in South Asia to be published during Spring/Summer 2010. We invite the submission of articles, essays, and book reviews on any topic related to law or public policy in one or more countries in South Asia, including Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Burma/Myanmar, India, Iran, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, Sikkim, or Sri Lanka.

Submission guidelines:

• There are no minimum or maximum length requirements for submission, but we encourage submissions ranging between 10-65 journal pages (between 3,000 and 20,000 words, including text and footnotes). We encourage authors to target the lengths of their submissions to this range.
• Please include with your submission (1) a short cover letter explaining your interest in publishing in the symposium issue and the scholarly contribution that your article makes, and (2) a curriculum vitae.
• Articles should be fully supported and citations should conform to The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation (18th ed.) (http://www.legalbluebook.com)
• We accept Adobe PDF or Microsoft Word submissions, but authors should be prepared to use Microsoft Word 2003 or 2007 during the editing process.

Submissions should be sent by email to lawrev@drexel.edu, with the subject heading: 2010 Symposium Submission. In the email, please include your name, institutional affiliation, email address, postal address, and phone number.

Please direct any questions to the Symposium Editor at lawrev@drexel.edu.

Submission deadline: Submissions will be accepted and reviewed on a rolling basis through December 31, 2009.

For more information about the Drexel Law Review visit:
http://drexel.edu/law/lawreview

Inquiries should be directed to the Symposium Editor at lawrev@drexel.edu.

From the very beginning it was evident that the government had underestimated the human cost of the military operation. As several camps were hastily set up to cater to the massive influx of IDPs, reports about the lack of even basic amenities in these camps began to emerge. Excessive heat (daytime temperatures soaring to 40°C and above), no electricity, food and water shortages, poor sanitation, and lack of proper health care are some of the immediate problems being faced by IDPs….

Lack of proper toilets and sanitation, unsafe drinking water, infrequent bathing, high air temperatures, inadequate disposal of solid waste, and the complete absence of a proper drainage system at the refugee camps are the main causes of worry for relief health workers. “This is the making of a disaster. These camps have been established on open tracts of land used for agricultural purposes. There are snakes, rats, and scorpions here. At night, when it is pitch dark because of no electricity, people sleep on the ground and are vulnerable to snakebites”, said M Idrees Mirza, a doctor who runs a private clinic in Rawalpindi city and is working voluntarily in the
camps.

“Conditions in these camps make them perfect breeding areas for mosquitoes and many varieties of insects. In my opinion, there is a very high probability of an outbreak of any disease like mumps, measles, scabies, malaria, diarrhoea, polio, and leishmaniasis”, said another health worker working for a respected NGO who spoke to The Lancet on condition of anonymity. “We need medicines, doctors, and qualified health workers. And we need them urgently. Any delays might result in a human catastrophe of unimaginable proportions.”….

Eager to establish its writ over the Swat Valley, the government seems to have created a health crisis which it may not be able to overcome. [link; registration req'd]

Two letters in the same issue of The Lancet offer additional details. But as dire as the situation has become within the camps, K.M. Bile and Assad Hafeez note in one of those letters that the government camps house only 20 percent of the IDPs — who may now total as many as 2.5 million individuals, almost half of them children:

Without counting the great costs to themselves, families in the local community are looking after more than 1·73 million people, in accordance with the local tradition of hospitality. Most displaced people have been accommodated within family homes; others are in schools, mosques, and other community buildings…. Although a proportion of host families are related to or friends of the displaced people, many have welcomed strangers. [link; registration req'd]

Continue reading at SAJAforum….

Land access, land tenure security, and related land rights are fundamental bases for the right to an adequate standard of living and are tied to the indigenous, ethnic, and cultural identities of peoples. Yet the problem of landlessness is growing worldwide: A quarter of the world’s population is landless. In Nepal, estimates suggest that over half the population is functionally landless.

For two weeks beginning May 9, Fordham Law School Professors Elisabeth Wickeri, Martha Rayner, and James Kainen will lead a delegation including eight law students on an overseas project to investigate and document the impact that inadequate access to land has on the rights of landless and land-poor people in Nepal, a country of 29 million in South Asia where landless people are disproportionately indigenous, of lower castes, and are women.

The Leitner Center delegation will document the impact that inadequate access to land has on human rights, including the rights to housing, food, water, and political participation. The delegation will also examine the evolving legal framework for landless people to secure their rights in a country emerging from ten years of conflict.

Professors Wickeri, Rayner, and Kainen will be joined by two additional human rights experts, Professors Anil Kalhan and Aoife Nolan. The Fordham Law School students participating in the documentation project are Crowley Scholars Amal Bouhabib, Corey Calabrese, Millie Canter, Benjamin Goldstein, Ganesh Krishna, Noushin Ketabi, David Mandel-Anthony, and Amisha Sharma. The delegation is happy to be working with the Kathmandu-based Community Self-Reliance Center.

The delegation will conduct wide-ranging interviews with members of the government, the judiciary, academics, lawyers, non-governmental and inter-governmental organizations, land rights organizers, men and women in rural landless communities, landlords, and local leaders whose expertise will inform a deeper understanding of the issues.

The delegation spent the spring semester studying human rights and Nepali culture and history. Following the fieldwork, the Leitner Center will publish a report of their findings which will be distributed in Nepal and internationally.

The Leitner Center for International Law and Justice at Fordham Law School promotes teaching, scholarship, and advocacy in the field of public international law. The Center sponsors programs designed to prepare law students for work as human rights lawyers and seeks to have a real and measurable impact on the level of respect for international human rights standards.

Contact: Elisabeth Wickeri
Email: wickeri@law.fordham.edu
Website: http://law.fordham.edu/Leitner.htm

QUESTION: Hi, Mr. President.

OBAMA: How are you?

QUESTION: Thank you for choosing me. I’m very well. I’m (inaudible) from the Times of India.

OBAMA: Wonderful.

QUESTION: You met with our Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. What did you — what are you — what is America doing to help India battle terrorism emanating from Pakistan?

OBAMA: Well, first of all, your prime minister is a wonderful man.

QUESTION: Thank you. I agree.

(LAUGHTER)

I agree.

OBAMA: You know, did you have something to do with that?

(LAUGHTER)

You seem to kind of take credit for it a little bit there.

(LAUGHTER)

QUESTION: We’re really proud of him, so…

OBAMA: Of course. You should be proud of him. I’m teasing you. I think he’s a very wise and decent man and has done a wonderful job in guiding India, even prior to being prime minister, along a path of extraordinary economic growth that is a marvel, I think, for all the world…. [link]

Must-see video of the entire exchange (including Obama’s full response) is above, and the rest of Obama’s answer appears after the jump. No word on whether Prime Minister Singh is now “walking on air” as well. However, the next time someone tells me that Sree Sreenivasan and Arun Venugopal are “wonderful men,” I’ll be tempted to interrupt and say “thank you.”

Unfortunately, Ghuman’s pride in her Prime Minister stole some of the media oxygen from the actual response to her own question. However, as the Associated Press notes, in his response Obama said that “in a nuclear age, at a time when perhaps the greatest enemy of both India and Pakistan should be poverty, … it may make sense to create a more effective dialogue between India and Pakistan.”

Continue reading at SAJAforum….

Warning that the loss of life may reach “catastrophic levels,” [Pillay] urged the government and Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) rebels to halt hostilities to allow the evacuation of civilians trapped on the northeastern coast.

Pillay said the government had repeatedly shelled the designated “no-fire” zones for civilians and also cited reports the separatist
guerrillas were holding civilians as human shields and had shot some as they tried to flee.

“Certain actions being undertaken by the Sri Lankan military and by the LTTE may constitute violations of international human rights and humanitarian law,” Pillay said in a statement.

“The world today is ever sensitive about such acts that could amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity,” added the former
U.N. war crimes judge, who is a member of the Tamil ethnic group and grew up in South Africa.

Pillay called on Sri Lanka’s government to grant full access to U.N. and other aid agencies to monitor human rights and humanitarian conditions amid reports of “severe malnutrition” among those trapped. [link]

Pillay stated that as many as 2,800 civilians have been killed and over 7,000 injured since January, and that as many as 180,000 civilians may be trapped in the conflict zone.

Others in the international community have raised similar concerns. According to the International Committee for the Red Cross, the humanitarian situation faced by civilians in the conflict zone is “deteriorating by the day.” Former special advisor to the UN Secretary General Lakhdar Brahimi says that the humanitarian crisis places Sri Lanka “on the brink of catastrophe.” In a phone call to to Sri Lanka’s President Mahinda Rajapaksa, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton expressed “deep concern” about escalating civilian deaths and urged the Sri Lankan Army “not [to] fire into the civilian areas of the conflict zone.” The European Union has also called for a cease fire to permit trapped civilians to escape the fighting.

Sri Lanka disputes the UN’s figures — the LTTE, the government asserts, has “infiltrated certain personalities into these agencies” — and has rejected calls for a cease fire. More details are available in two stories from the BBC World Service’s Evening Report, linked above (and here and here). However, according to the Christian Science Monitor:

[T]he sensitive data aired by Ms. Pillay were based on firsthand daily reporting by UN national staff and aid workers trapped in the no-fire zone. A copy of a recent UN briefing paper that was obtained by the Monitor listed similar casualty figures and described mounting casualties in the squalid, densely packed coastal strip. “Daily incoming artillery and mortar fire has caused large number of casualties with a noted increase since 26 Feb,” it said.

The briefing paper said several weeks of food and medicine shortages had led to deaths from malnutrition and from preventable diseases. [link]

Meanwhile, SAJAer Angilee Shah has published a feature article in the Far Eastern Economic Review (which was reported from Colombo, Singapore, and Los Angeles with the support of a SAJA Reporting Fellowship) critically examining the consequences of the Rajapaksa government’s aggressive approach to prosecuting the civil war:

Continue reading at SAJAforum….

TV, radio and online news will be disrupted on Friday 3 April and Thursday 9 April after nearly 800 members of the National Union of Journalists chapel at the BBC today voted in favour of industrial action in a national ballot.

More than 1,100 of the union’s nearly 4,000 members at the corporation took part in the vote, 77% of whom voted in favour of a strike.

The most urgent threat of compulsory cuts is at the World Service’s South Asian section, where up to 20 members are at risk, the union has said. Staff in Scotland are also understood to be under threat.

The NUJ general secretary, Jeremy Dear, said: “Journalists at the South Asian services have been fighting a heroic struggle against the outsourcing of their jobs … now they have the weight of thousands of NUJ members at the BBC behind them.” [link]

In late February, journalists within the South Asia services held their own one-day strike to protest the proposed restructuring. In addition to worrying about lost jobs in London, the journalists fear that shifting operations to the subcontinent would compromise the quality and independence of the BBC’s coverage:

Staff are concerned that moving production of these BBC language services abroad will result in poorer output and a loss of independence which is integral to the BBC World Service.

One member commented: “If the BBC’s succeeds in imposing change, the tendency will be for the output to become more and more India-centric, in the case of the India service, as they try to compete with local FM broadcasters.

“This moves away from the World Service’s USP: impartial news with a global perspective. Why should the British taxpayer end up paying for a local Indian radio station?” [link]

The International Federation of Journalists has echoed these concerns, asserting that “the BBC management’s off-shoring plans will put at risk seventy years of first-class journalism and expose their journalists to political and commercial pressures beyond their control.” On the eve of last month’s one-day strike, John McDonnell, a Labour MP for west London, elaborated upon these concerns even further:

Continue reading at SAJAforum….

The Pakistan government agreed on Monday to reinstate Iftikhar Chaudhry as Supreme Court chief justice to end a political crisis that has gripped the Muslim nation, a government official said.

The official added that a constitutional package would also be presented.

President Asif Ali Zardari had hitherto stonewalled calls from the opposition led by former prime minister Nawaz Sharif and a lawyers’ movement to restore the judge.

Chaudhry was dismissed in late 2007 by then-president and army chief
Pervez Musharraf, but Zardari regarded the judge as too politicized and
feared he could pose a threat to his own presidency if restored. [link]

No solid confirmation as yet, but Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani is scheduled to address the nation shortly.

Continue reading at SAJAforum….

On the heels of an emergency crackdown earlier this week, in which the government of President Asif Ali Zardari responded to the “Long March” organized by the lawyers movement by banning public gatherings and reportedly detained hundreds of opposition lawyers and political workers, Zardari has also moved to block transmission of Geo TV throughout the country:

On the direct order of President Asif Ali Zardari, the transmission of the Geo News was blocked by cable operators in various parts of the country on Friday, which drew flak from across the country.

The transmission was blocked in some parts of Karachi, Hyderabad,
Islamabad, Rawalpindi, Lahore, Quetta, Multan, Rawalakot, Muzaffarabad, Deepalpur, Sargodha, Nawabshah, Faisalabad, Gujranwala and Dera Murad Jamali. [link]

Geo and other TV news channels were previously blocked — for much the same reasons as the present ban by Zardari — by Gen. Pervez Musharraf, first as the lawyers’ movement was gaining momentum in the spring of 2007 and later after Musharraf declared a state of “emergency” in November 2007.

The Geo ban has apparently prompted the resignation of Information Minister Sherry Rehman, a leading member of the Pakistan People’s Party and close confidante of the late former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto:

Continue reading at SAJAforum….

Both the New York Times and Time have published stories within the past month discussing the prevalence of so-called “encounter killings” in India:

Numbering in the thousands every year, “encounters” or “encounter killings” are shootouts between the Indian police or army and any criminal element, from terrorists to petty thieves. Many Indians believe that at least some are stage-managed — with, say, a police officer placing a gun in the hands of a dead person — leading to the popular phrase, “fake encounter killing.”…

In almost all, India’s limited forensics capabilities make investigating the claims of either side hard to verify. But the national news media often accept the police’s version,which puts them in harmony with many in their middle-class audience who fear rising crime and terrorism. Meanwhile, Bollywood and Indian media lionize “encounter specialists” — soldiers or policemen who, like Dirty Harry, specialize in shootouts. [NYT]

* * *

Human rights activists have for years protested the growing incidence of encounters, some of them allegedly staged. “Encounters have become the norm,” says Vrinda Grover, lawyer and human rights activist. “They have become the police’s preferred method to deal with not just terrorists, but criminals of all kinds.” Legends of “encounter specialist” cops abound, and one of them was even the subject of the Bollywood film Ab Tak Chhappan (”So far 56″, implying the number of people he had killed).

Activists allege that in numerous instances, evidence has been planted after a shooting in order to justify police claims that officers had acted in self defense. Encounters are meant to be probed by a magistrate following a post-mortem, but critics point out that the investigative work in such probes is undertaken by the police themselves. They also allege that such tactics enjoy tacit approval from the authorities in areas plagued by insurgencies. [Time]

Continue reading at SAJAforum….

Perhaps it’s fitting that Pakistan’s latest crisis has come just as the television series Battlestar Galactica (whose final episode airs next week) is drawing to a close. Between the Musharraf Supreme Court’s controversial decision to declare Pakistan Muslim League-N leaders Nawaz Sharif and Shahbaz Sharif ineligible to hold public office, President Asif Ali Zardari’s decision to crack down on the lawyers’ movement and other opponents, and the State Department’s apparent decision, at least initially, to respond to the crisis somewhat tepidly, one is left, wearily, with the irresistible sense that all of this has happened before, and all of it will happen again.

To refresh our collective recollection, Zardari’s ascent to power last September came on the heels of an unprecedented movement in which Pakistan’s lawyers and ultimately its electorate decisively rejected then-General-cum-President Pervez Musharraf’s interference with the independence of Pakistan’s judiciary and his authoritarian, martial law-like crackdown on his opponents in the guise of “Emergency.” Like Benazir Bhutto before him, Zardari pledged on many occasions after the election to fulfill the key demands that stirred this mass movement to action: restoration of the judges unlawfully ousted by Musharraf, and in particular, restoration of Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry. Zardari also promised to roll back the powers accumulated in the presidency by Musharraf, restoring the supremacy of Pakistan’s parliament. Well over a year has passed since Pakistan’s electorate delivered that mandate. However, Zardari’s government has neither restored Chaudhry to his position, nor rolled back any of the other extraconstitutional actions taken by Musharraf during the Emergency, nor repealed the sweeping executive powers instituted by Musharraf.

Now, with Musharraf’s still-lingering Supreme Court declaring Zardari’s PML-N rivals ineligible to hold office, Zardari’s government has dismissed the PML-N government in Punjab and imposed Governor’s Rule, leading to civil and political unrest throughout the province. In response to this week’s second anniversary of Chaudhry’s suspension by Musharraf, the lawyers’ movement already had planned a second “Long March” on Islamabad, from March 12 to 16, seeking restoration of Pakistan’s pre-November 2007 constitution and reinstatement of all judges ousted during the Emergency.

Apparently feeling the political heat, Zardari then discovered his inner Musharraf — not on the golf course, as he previously had told the world he would have preferred, but rather in the authoritarian laws inherited from the British:

[P]olice and intelligence officials carried out early-morning raids across Punjab and Sindh, arresting more than 300 lawyers and political activists…. The crackdown began late Tuesday night, with the government invoking Section 144 of the 1860 Penal Code, a law from the British colonial era that forbids public gatherings of four or more people. As whispers of imminent arrests gathered momentum and local television channels exhibited lengthy lists of intended targets, many prominent lawyers and politicians went into hiding, just as they did during a crackdown operated by former President Pervez Musharraf….

Indeed, many of the people allegedly on the lists were last arrested in late 2007, when Musharraf imposed emergency rule….

Athar Minallah, a prominent lawyer, maneuvered himself out of being arrested from the driver’s seat of his car. “I locked myself in the car, and the police didn’t know how to get me,” he said. “So I called the television cameras who were only two minutes away. I began giving live interviews from the car, addressing the Interior Minister, Rehman Malik, directly. After a while, Mr. Malik came down himself and shouted the police officers away.” [link]

Perhaps seeking to out-Musharraf Musharraf, Zardari’s government has even played the terrorism card.

During the 2008 campaign, President Obama sharply criticized the Bush administration’s approach to Pakistan, asserting that by

coddl[ing] Musharraf, we alienated the Pakistani population, because we were anti-democratic. We had a 20th-century mindset that basically said, ‘Well, you know, he may be a dictator, but he’s our dictator.”….

That’s going to change when I’m president of the United States. [link]

So how has the new administration responded to this week’s events? State Department spokesperson Robert Wood’s initial response did not go all that smoothly:

‘You haven’t been clear at all about where the US stands on what’s going on in Pakistan,’ said a journalist.

‘I have given you what our position is. I can’t give you an assessment of what’s taking place right at this moment on the ground,’ said Wood.

‘That’s not what I’m asking. I’m asking, what is your position on reinstatement of the chief judge,’ the journalist asked.

‘That’s something that’s going to have to be determined by the Pakistanis in accordance with their laws and their constitution. I can’t go beyond that,’ said Wood.

‘But when President Musharraf installed a state of emergency to avoid the reinstatement of the judges, you had called for the reinstatement of the judges,’ the journalist reminded him.

‘Look, I’m giving you what the policy is right now. And as I’ve said, this is something that needs to be worked out within Pakistan’s political sphere in accordance with its laws. That’s about the best I can give you,’ said Wood. [link]

Still, to their credit, Wood and other diplomats, including special envoy Richard Holbrooke, have publicly expressed concern about Zardari’s restrictions on freedom of assembly and freedom of speech, and have urged Pakistan to act in accordance to the rule of law. Will it make any difference? As when the crisis over the judiciary first began, hum dekhenge. Again, and still.

“[the United States's] patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus - and non-believers. We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this Earth.”  [link]

This morning, at the Washington National Cathedral, the Inaugural Prayer Service extended Obama’s message of spiritual pluralism by including participants from a variety of different religious traditions. Ingrid Mattson, president of the Islamic Society of North America, and Uma Mysorekar, president of the Hindu Temple Society of North America, were two of the six participants to give responsive prayers during the service.

SAJAforum readers may recall Mysorekar from her appearance on The Colbert Report and her efforts to have Diwali placed on New York City’s official “parking holiday” calendar. Mattson, who is a professor of Islamic Studies and Christian-Muslim Relations at Hartford Seminary, is “the first woman, the first nonimmigrant and the first Muslim convert” to be elected as ISNA’s president.

The video of the service is available here, and the text of both Mattson’s and Mysorekar’s responsive prayers appears in the official program for the service:

Continue reading at SAJAforum…

Fast forward sixteen years: The president-elect is a biracial, second generation American who grew up in Hawaii and considers himself desi. South Asians and other Asian Americans feature prominently in both the transition and the new administration’s significant appointees. And in contrast to that one Capitol Hill reception in 1993, Washington is chock full of Asian American events in connection with the inaugural celebration, including several South Asian-oriented gatherings.

South Asians for Obama got a jump on the festivities on Saturday evening, hosting an informal happy hour which drew over 300 attendees. One of the group’s cofounders, Hrishi Karthikeyan, took some time out of his inaugural week schedule to answer a few questions.

Continue reading at SAJAforum…

Given the controversy, Etheridge was “stunned” to learn that Warren would be giving the keynote address at the Muslim Public Affairs Council’s annual convention in California — where Etheridge herself was scheduled to appear with Junoon’s Salman Ahmad to perform “Ring The Bells,” a song they had co-written “call[ing] for peace and unity in our world.” (Since December, apparently, is “Using Music to Change the World Month,” the MPAC performance was intended to initiate a broader “Ring the Bells for Peace” Campaign, which you can read more about here.)

Etheridge says that she initially contemplated canceling her appearance at MPAC on account of Warren’s appearance. However, as she recounts at the Huffington Post, Etheridge ultimately decided on a different approach to the situation:

Continue reading at SAJAforum…

Continue reading at SAJAforum…

However, the attacks and their aftermath are certainly being experienced rather acutely throughout the South Asian subcontinent itself and within South Asian diaspora communities in other parts of the world. Take, for example, Sri Lanka. Certainly, the people of Sri Lanka have plenty else on their minds these days, with military clashes between the government and the Tamil Tigers proceeding apace and major floods destroying thousands of homes and displacing tens of thousands of people, many of whose lives already had been disrupted by the ongoing fighting. Nevertheless, these serious events — each worthy of greater international media attention in its own right — have not kept Sri Lankans from also experiencing the ramifications of this week’s Bombay terrorist attacks.

Continue reading at SAJAforum…

Chaudhry is the eighth individual to be conferred honorary membership by the New York City Bar. Prior recipients include former Chief Justice of the United States William Rehnquist, former Chief Justice of India P.N. Bhagwati, and Judge Thomas
Buergenthal of the International Court of Justice.

Continue reading at SAJAforum….

Musharraf himself is now gone from the political scene, having resigned in August, but the legacy of his Emergency is being remembered today in Pakistan and around the world.

Amnesty International’s Asia-Pacific Director, Sam Zarifi, laments that one year later, Pakistan “is still suffering from the abusive policies [Musharraf] put in place” during last year’s crackdown:

In Pakistan, lawyers and others have marked the occasion with protests. Lawyers have rallied across the country, calling on new President Asif Ali Zardari’s government to fully roll back all of Musharraf’s extraconstitutional measures, including his removal of Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry:

Continue reading at SAJAforum….

Events in Malaysia have been heating up again in recent weeks. On October 16, the government of Malaysia banned the Hindu Rights Action Force (HINDRAF), a coalition of nongovernmental organizations that advocates greater protection for the rights of Hindus against what it regards to be a rise in Malay chauvinism within the country. According to Malaysia’s Home Minister, Datuk Seri Syed Hamid Albar:

We are not banning it (Hindraf) because it was promoting Hindu rights or Indian rights. On legitimate issues, nobody can quarrel with Hindraf. But we are taking action because we consider the way it has gone about doing things — promoting extremism.

Hindraf has said “our enemies are the Malays, the Muslims.” This is in some of their leaders’ speeches. We have allowed them to go on. Yes, there are some issues involving the Indians that have not been totally resolved, but to say that we oppress, commit apartheid or genocide and that the police allowed murder in Kg Medan and Kg Rawa?

Hindraf has organised 17 forums and 338 street demonstrations. We took a long time before taking action because we don’t want them to think that because it is a society that seems to speak for a certain race or religion, that we took action. We took action because we considered that they have taken a very extreme approach to propagate their ideology. [link]

Continue reading at SAJAforum….

The winner here, she says, is the city’s economy:

“We’re able to provide them with an American big city location that doubles very well for New York at a lower price. They’re using local resources and paying for them and staying in local hotels and spending quite a lot of money here.” [link]

While the Film Office has been mostly hush-hush about the film’s details, to avoid a “paparazzi blitz,” the secret seems not all that carefully guarded. The film is an action flick starring John Abraham, Katrina Kaif, and Neil Nitin Mukesh, and its highly creative working title is “New York.” Although production began in August, the Film Office only this week revealed word of the film’s shooting in an effort to prevent the public from going on red alert over the dramatic scenes being shot over the weekend:

If you’re walking in Center City this weekend, near 16th and Market streets, don’t mind the FBI helicopters overhead or the sounds of gunfire.

“Don’t be concerned, it’s just a movie,” said Sharon Pinkenson, executive director of the Greater Philadelphia Film Office….

Continue reading at SAJAforum….

On Friday, SAJAer Rekha Basu, who is a columnist for the paper and attended the meeting, shared some of her reactions in a column for the Register:

John McCain is angry.

You can feel it in the clenched muscles in his throat, the narrowing of his eyes, the controlled tone with
which he handles a question he doesn’t like, as if struggling to contain something that might spill out. We’ve seen that body language on TV. But around a Des Moines Register table Tuesday, the anger and tension were palpable. And unsettling.

McCain’s volatility has been written and whispered about by staff and Senate colleagues: the mercurial temper, the quixotic outbursts of reproach, then jocularity. But those alleged episodes were behind the scenes. The combative, prickly McCain we saw was seeking the Register’s endorsement. He already got it in the caucuses.

He took frequent offense at questions, characterizing them as personal viewpoints of the questioners rather than legitimate topics. True, he was asked some tough, pointed questions about his running mate and his honesty. But America is having those discussions, and you’d expect he’d be ready, not defensive. It takes a thick skin to be president. [link]

The entire column is available here, and video of the entire interview (which runs just under an hour) is available here. Basu answered three quick questions about the McCain interview:

SAJAforum: Compared to what you describe in your column, what was McCain’s temperament like during his meeting with the Register’s editorial board last fall, in advance of the caucuses?

Continue reading at SAJAforum….

"How about the Pakistan situation?," asked [Michael] Rovito, who said he was not a Palin supporter. "What’s your thoughts about that?"

"In Pakistan?," she asked, looking surprised.

"What’s going on over there, like Waziristan?"

"It’s working with [Pakistani president] Zardari to make sure that
we’re all working together to stop the guys from coming in over the
border," she told him. "And we’ll go from there."

Rovito wasn’t finished. "Waziristan is blowing up!," he said.

"Yeah it is," Palin said, "and the economy there is blowing up too."

"So we do cross border, like from Afghanistan to Pakistan you think?," Rovito asked.

"If that’s what we have to do stop the terrorists from coming any
further in, absolutely, we should," Palin responded, before moving on
to greet other voters. [link]

The comment was interpreted by many to be closer to the position of Sen. Barack Obama than to that of Palin’s own running mate, Sen. John McCain, who just the previous evening had criticized Obama’s position on Pakistan during the first presidential debate. The next day, the McCain campaign retracted Palin’s comments, and in a joint interview of McCain and Palin by CBS’s Katie Couric the following Monday, McCain blamed the entire episode on what he referred to as "gotcha journalism."

Today, the Temple graduate student in question, Michael Rovito, has published an op-ed in the Philadelphia Inquirer about his exchange with Palin and the subject of "gotcha journalism":

No one was engaging the Alaska governor beyond small talk. Most of
the people in the crowd appeared starstruck, including some Obama
supporters we had spotted earlier.

I felt compelled to ask the governor about the U.S. incursions into
Pakistan that had been in the news recently. My parents urged me not
to, but I thought she might respond in this informal setting….

Continue reading at SAJAforum….

Video of the exchange to the right. Other reactions to the debate, along with excerpts from the debate transcript, after the jump.

Continue reading at SAJAforum….

Like a number of others, I did a series of double takes upon hearing some of John McCain’s comments on Pakistan during this exchange in last night’s presidential debate:

MCCAIN: Now, on this issue of aiding Pakistan… We’ve got to get the support of the people of — of Pakistan….

OBAMA: [T]he problem, John, with the strategy that’s been pursued was that, for 10 years, we coddled Musharraf, we alienated the Pakistani population, because we were anti-democratic. We had a 20th-century mindset that basically said, “Well, you know, he may be a dictator, but he’s our dictator.”

And as a consequence, we lost legitimacy in Pakistan. We spent $10 billion. And in the meantime, they weren’t going after Al Qaida, and they are more powerful now than at any time since we began the war in Afghanistan.

That’s going to change when I’m president of the United States.

MCCAIN: I — I don’t think that Senator Obama understands that there was a failed state in Pakistan when Musharraf came to power. Everybody who was around then, and had been there, and knew about it knew that it was a failed state. [link]

Perhaps McCain is being tutored on foreign policy by his vice presidential nominee, because I got lost in a hailstorm of nonsense there. McCain’s insistence upon the need “to get the support of the people of Pakistan” is all well and good — and I’m sure that the people of Pakistan would have welcomed that sentiment back in the winter, when Musharraf was trampling all over them. Instead, McCain unconditionally backed Musharraf at every turn, hailing the General as a “legitimately elected” president in the face of all evidence to the contrary. McCain even went so far as to call Musharraf a “scrupulously honest” man who had “done a pretty good job” and deserved the “benefit of the doubt” in the aftermath of his Emergency and Benazir Bhutto’s assassination. I do not know when, precisely, the moment was when McCain looked into Musharraf’s eyes and got a sense of the man’s scrupulously honest soul, but McCain’s character reference came several years after the Pakistani public got a good look for themselves, when the General brazenly reneged on a public promise that he would step down as army chief of staff.

But what should we make of McCain’s puzzling claim that Pakistan was a “failed state” before Musharraf’s 1999 military coup? The assertion goes well beyond defending the Bush administration’s unconditional support for Musharraf in recent years against Obama’s criticism. Rather, McCain necessarily seems to be asserting that Musharraf’s decision to overthrow Pakistan’s democratically elected government in the first place was justified. It turns out McCain has made this assertion before, asserting on the campaign trail in Iowa that Pakistan was a “failed state” before Musharraf came to power because it “had corrupt governments and they would rotate back and forth and there was corruption.” Of course, reasonable people can certainly disagree about how precisely to define a “failed state,” but it seems a stretch to put late-1990s Pakistan in that category. It’s also not as if Pakistan fared particularly well in this respect under Musharraf. At least according to the index developed by the Fund for Peace and Foreign Policy, Pakistan was at pretty serious risk of becoming a “failed state” during each of the last three years of Musharraf’s tenure as president. In any event, having “corrupt governments [that] rotate back and forth” certainly cannot be what defines a “failed state,” as McCain would have it. By McCain’s definition, one might conclude that India was a failed state in the late 1980s and again in the late 1990s.

McCain’s justification of Musharraf’s 1999 military coup is yet another example in which he seems to be singing a rather different tune than he was eight years ago. Recall that McCain was running for president when Musharraf overthrew Nawaz Sharif in 1999 — indeed, he was explicitly asked for his views about Musharraf’s coup in an interview only a few weeks later:

LARRY KING: How about military takeover bringing stability in Pakistan?

MCCAIN: Well, it may have brought some semblance of stability, but we only want the institutions of democracy that — to prevail in this and every other country in the world, and to have to resort to a military coup is not something the United States should support. The — I think [Gov. Bush's] point was that this was a very corrupt government that was overthrown, but it’s — in my view, it’s still not a reason to overthrow it. It’s a reason for us to do everything we can to help clean up that corruption and have the rule of law prevail in Pakistan and every other country in the world. [CNN, Larry King Live, Nov. 15, 1999, via Nexis]

UPDATE (9/28/08): Teeth Maestro rounds up some reactions to the debate by Pakistani bloggers at Global Voices.

UPDATE (9/30/08): Matthew Yglesias reports that he asked William Milam — who, as U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan at the time of Musharraf’s 1999 coup, “was certainly ‘around then’ and ‘had been there’” — for his view of whether Pakistan was a “failed state” before Musharraf assumed power. Milam’s response:

[W]hile there were a lot of things wrong in Pakistan during the years leading up to the 1999 military takeover, Pakistan was not a failed state as we normally define such states. I am on record as stating publicly that, having come to Pakistan from Liberia a year before the takeover, I had a pretty good idea of what failed states look like, and [Pakistan] was not one. [link]

[The leaders] agreed to kickstart an embattled peace dialogue between the two nuclear-armed rivals, with new talks to be scheduled by year’s end….

Singh and Zardari also decided to launch trading between the divided zones of the disputed Kashmir region from October 21….

The leaders agreed that a special meeting of a joint anti-terror mechanism be held next month to address "mutual concerns," including the bombing of the embassy, the statement said….

Singh and Zardari appeared satisfied as they emerged from the meeting.

In brief remarks, Singh praised Zardari’s vision for a progressive South Asia, saying they decided that issues be resolved through "peaceful" means.

Zardari called Singh the "architect of modern India," saying, "I hope to learn from him."

The meeting helped eased tensions, officials from both sides said.

"The leaders met for well over an hour, spent most of their time without aides and had a comprehensive discussion of the entire realm of issues in our relationship," Indian Foreign Secretary Shiv Shankar Menon told reporters….

According to the statement, crossborder trade will commence on the road between Srinagar and Muzaffarabad, capitals respectively of Indian and Pakistani zones of Kashmir, as well as the road from Poonch, in southern Indian Kashmir, to Rawalakot in Pakistani Kashmir. [link]

The text of their joint statement is available here.

The Singh-Zardari meeting, however, was overshadowed in the U.S. media by coverage of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s courtesy calls with visiting world leaders during her own trip to New York. South Asian leaders featured prominently in Palin’s schedule. While media access to Palin’s meetings was strictly limited,
journalists were able to get some access to Palin’s initial exchanges of pleasantries with the visiting heads of state.

Continue reading at SAJAforum….

Continue reading at SAJAforum….

SIGN UP NOW for the next SABANY/SAALT
Lawyering for Social Change CLE Workshop

“Class & Work: Exploring the Rights of South Asians in the Workplace”

PROGRAM DESCRIPTION:
South Asians in the United States support the country’s economy by being employed in a range of occupations - from lawyers, doctors, and bankers to restaurant workers, taxiworkers, and domestic workers. Yet, many working-class South Asians confront significant legal challenges in the workplace, including exploitation by employers, threats of deportation, and denial of fair wages. During this interactive workshop, participants will learn about the range of legal obstacles that South Asian workers face; discuss the intersection of class and race; and learn how lawyers can provide their skills to assist individuals and organizations.

SPEAKERS:
Chitra Aiyar, Board Member, Andolan
Sheebani Patel, Organizer/Attorney, Restaurant Workers Opportunity Center of New York (ROC-NY)
Tushar Sheth, Attorney, Asian American Legal Defense & Education Fund (AALDEF)

* * *

Fordham Law School, 140 W. 62nd StreetDATE: Wednesday, September 24th
TIME: 6:30-8:00pm (note: earlier start and end time than last month’s session)
LOCATION: Fordham Law School, 140 W 62nd Street, Room 310 (note: the room number is different from last month’s session)

RSVP TO: lawyering.for.social.change@gmail.com with your name, school/employer, address, and phone number

COST: Free!

PERKS: CLE Credit (for those who attend the entire session) and free dinner!

Cosponsored by the South Asian Bar Association of New York (SABANY), Asian American Bar Association of New York (AABANY), South Asian Americans Leading Together, and the Fordham South Asian Law Students Association

Join us on Wednesday, September 17th for a panel discussion on immigration policy and the challenges of organizing and advocating on behalf of immigrant workers, featuring Rinku Sen and Fekkak Mamdouh. In their new book, The Accidental American, Sen and Mamdouh “argue[] that, just as there is a free flow of capital in the world economy, there should be a free flow of labor”:

Author Rinku Sen alternates chapters telling the story of one “accidental American” — coauthor Fekkak Mamdouh, a Morrocan-born waiter at a restaurant in the World Trade Center whose life was thrown into turmoil on 9/11 — with a thorough critique of current immigration policy. Sen and Mamdouh describe how members of the largely immigrant food industry workforce managed to overcome divisions in the aftermath of 9/11 and form the Restaurant Opportunities Center of New York (ROC-NY) to fight for jobs and more equitable treatment. This extraordinary story serves to illuminate the racial, cultural, and economic conflicts embedded in the current immigration debate and helps frame the argument for a more humane immigration and global labor system. [link]

The discussion will be moderated by Prof. Anil Kalhan, and will be followed by a reception in the Second Floor Gallery.

* * *

Drexel University Earle Mack School of Law When: Wed, Sep 17, 2008, 2:30-4:30pm

Where: Drexel University Earle Mack School of Law, Rm 440 (reception to follow in 2nd Floor Gallery), 3320 Market Street, Philadelphia, PA

Sponsored by the Drexel University Earle Mack School of Law Chapter of the National Lawyers Guild. For more information, please contact Nicole Aiken or Ryan Miller at drexelnlg@gmail.com.

* * *

Previously: Five Questions for Rinku Sen (SAJAforum).

For decades, the late Vincent “the Chin” Gigante was renowned for his methodical efforts to convince the world that he was crazy. Or, if not the world, at least the judges before whom prosecutors sought to convict the well-known crime boss on charges ranging from bribery and racketeering to conspiracy to commit murder. Gigante went to painstaking lengths to convey the appearance that he was mentally ill and therefore incompetent to stand trial, wandering around Greenwich Village in his bathrobe and slippers while either muttering to or having boisterous arguments with himself. (And on occasion, for good measure, scooping up cigarette butts off the sidewalks and trying to smoke them.) While the so-called “oddfather” never received the Oscar that he so richly deserved, he did manage to avoid facing trial for many years before finally being tried and convicted by a jury in connection with a conspiracy to murder a former associate in 1997. Gigante ultimately was forced to admit in 2003 that his decades-long performance was indeed a ruse, and he accordingly pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice. Along the way, dozens of prominent experts offered confident diagnoses asserting that Gigante was in fact mentally ill.

Today, many Pakistanis are wondering whether they have an “oddfather” of their very own, in the person of Pakistan People’s Party co-chairperson Asif Zardari, the artist formerly known as “Mr. Ten Percent” and the widower of former Pakistan Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto:

[C]ourt documents filed by Mr Zardari’s doctors suggest he had been diagnosed as suffering from a series of serious conditions including severe depression, dementia and post-traumatic stress disorder. He had even experienced suicidal thoughts….

The details of Mr Zardari’s mental health examination, revealed yesterday by the Financial Times, were presented to a court in London to support an application to delay a now-defunct corruption case that was being brought against him by the Pakistan government. His lawyers presumably were looking for reasons to persuade the court to postpone the hearing - something they were successful in achieving. [link]

**

Zardari could remember neither the birthdays of his wife and children, nor more than a handful of facts from two short stories he was read. “He had difficulty focusing, concentrating and paying attention, is persistently sad, chronically anxious and apprehensive. He stated that he has had suicidal thoughts, but has not made any suicide gestures,” Mr. Reich wrote.

Another March 2007 diagnosis - by Philip Saltiel, a New York City-based psychiatrist - said emotional and neurological problems suffered by Mr Zardari because of medical treatment and imprisonment had resulted in “emotional instability” and “deficits in memory and concentration”. Mr Saltiel wrote: “I do not foresee any improvement in these issues for at least a year.” [link]

Almost a year and a half later, the revelations about Zardari’s court filings place him in a bit of a quandry. On the one hand, as with Gigante before him, the opinions offered by Zardari’s experts may have helped fend off some of the many court cases around the world charging him with corruption and fraud. On the other hand, in the aftermath of Pervez Musharraf’s resignation, Zardari now wants to become president of Pakistan himself, and is the presumptive nominee for that office of his party and, apparently, of the Bush administration, which has rather clumsily dropped whatever pretense of neutrality it had left. Of course, one might readily believe that having a touch of the crazy is a time-honored prerequisite to holding high political office. However, the Pakistan Constitution does not permit an individual to become president if he or she has been “declared by a competent court to be of unsound mind,” and authorizes removal of the president on the ground of “mental incapacity.” Even in the absence of any formal court order declaring him of “unsound mind,” therefore, Zardari may have placed himself in the somewhat awkward position of having rendered himself potentially removable — through his very own defense strategy — from the moment he is sworn into office.

Zardari’s associates claim that he’s not crazy, he was just a little unwell. (I know, back then you couldn’t tell.) After all, they note, Zardari languished in prison for many years, claims to have been tortured, and even feared being killed while in custody. Under such circumstances, says Zardari friend Wajid Shamsul Hasan, “[a]ny human being” would have suffered. Zardari’s true condition is, of course, difficult for any outsider to assess. And certainly one can and should have sympathy for the possibility that he could have suffered mightily if subjected to torture and inhuman treatment while in prison, as he has claimed. Nevertheless, Zardari’s associates seem to be suggesting that during the past year — in which he has endured not only the trauma of his wife’s tragic assassination, but also the stress of being unexpectedly thrust into a high stakes leadership position — his earlier afflictions not only have not been exacerbated, but in fact have gone away altogether. He has now fully recovered, they say, and is “fit as a fiddle.”

Whatever the actual state of Zardari’s mental health, Pakistan’s lawyers and judges must continue to find themselves perplexed by Zardari’s behavior since Pakistan held elections back in February. More than six months after the Pakistani electorate decisively repudiated Musharraf and made clear its desire to see the reinstatement of Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry and the other judges ousted by Musharraf, Zardari’s government has yet to make any meaningful effort to reinstate those judges or roll back the other constitutional changes that Musharraf imposed by decree during the Emergency. Zardari has broken one promise after another about the judges to his coalition partner, Nawaz Sharif, leading Sharif to temporarily pull his Pakistan Muslim League ministers out of the cabinet back in May and, more decisively, to pull his party out of the government altogether earlier this week. Zardari has openly acknowledged reneging on his deals with Sharif about the judges, the most recent being a written agreement to reinstate all of the ousted judges within 24 hours after Musharraf’s impeachment or resignation. Zardari has justified breaking his word by asserting that his agreements with Sharif are “not holy like the holy Quran and the Hadith,” but rather can be modified as convenient. Somewhat inconveniently, however, with his latest agreement Zardari also reportedly told Sharif, “Let’s take an oath on the Koran this time that I will fulfill all my promises.”

And the mixed messages continue. Last week, Zardari told Newsweek that he “personally [is] in favor of the chief justice, but there is a position in the party, which says that he has become too politicized in the last many months and he has been leading rallies.” This week, by contrast, Zardari cryptically said that “perhaps [he] cannot reveal the whole truth to the nation” about why he has been unwilling to move forward with the reinstatement of all of the ousted judges. Zardari also was reported to have suggested that a coalition partner, the Awami National Party, supported him in opposing restoration of all of the ousted judges, but later was forced to “clarify” that statement through a party spokesperson after the ANP protested to the contrary that they have consistently supported restoration of all of the ousted judges.

In the aftermath of the February elections, Zardari was hailed by many as a statesman for his role in building a broad coalition aimed at national reconciliation — and for being able to do so only weeks after mourning his wife’s death. With respect to the judiciary, however, more recent reviews of Zardari’s performance have been decidedly less favorable. Reports have consistently indicated that the principal source of Zardari’s reluctance to permit reinstatement of all of the judges ousted by Musharraf — and his reluctance, in particular, to see the Chief Justice return to office — is a fear that independent judges might permit the corruption charges against him to go forward. (Pressure from the Bush administration not to restore the judges could well be another factor.) However, Zardari’s own experience suggests that perhaps he has nothing to fear from an independent judiciary at all. Maybe he simply needs to press his legal and medical experts back into service, and to invest in a nice bathrobe and a comfortable pair of slippers.

Sen and Mamdouh tell the story of ROC-NY’s founding and the ups and downs of its subsequent campaigns on behalf of New York’s restaurant workers, critically assessing the challenges faced by advocates for immigrants’ rights and drawing lessons from the local story about ROC-NY for the broader, national debates over immigration reform and globalization. Sen previously wrote about ROC-NY in a 2007 article, and she and Mamdouh discuss the themes of the book in a short video prepared in connection with the book’s release. They launch a national book tour in New York on September 3, 2008 (details are available here).

Sen is currently president and executive director of the Applied Research Center and publisher of ColorLines, ARC’s magazine on race and politics. She began her career as an organizer in 1988 with the Center for Third World Organizing and was named one of Ms. Magazine’s "21 Feminists to Watch in the 21st Century" back in 1996. Her previous book, "Stir It Up: Lessons in Community Organizing and Advocacy," offers advice for activists and social change organizations based on her own experiences as an organizer and other case studies. She recently answered a few questions from SAJAforum about her new book, the role of journalism in her work as a community organizer, and her views on the current debate over immigration reform:

Continue reading at SAJAforum….

I was told you had to do "lightbulb lightbulb, motorbike motorbike." I
practiced a great deal, and I had my kurta pajama, and my chappals, and my everything else, and I thought I looked absolutely tremendous. And everybody else turned up in a suit. [link]

Continue reading at SAJAforum….

This morning, Aitzaz Ahsan, the President of the Pakistan Supreme Court Bar Association and the leader of Pakistan’s “lawyers’ movement,” spoke to a large audience at the New York City Bar Association about the lawyers’ movement, the importance of an independent judiciary, and the role of U.S. policy in Pakistan’s judicial crisis. During the past year, the New York City Bar has played an active role in support of Pakistan’s lawyers and judges — organizing a solidarity rally with other area bar associations after Gen. Pervez Musharraf imposed “emergency” rule in November, issuing a statement strongly urging Musharraf to restore the rule of law, and awarding an honorary membership, one of the organization’s highest honors, to Pakistan Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry.

In his remarks, Ahsan thanked U.S. lawyers and bar associations for their “unstinting support for constitutionalism, rule of law, and reinstatement of an independent judiciary in Pakistan.” He said that last November’s rally — which drew hundreds of New York lawyers to the steps of the courthouse in lower Manhattan — “was an unprecedented collective action, and it was noticed throughout Pakistan.” Ahsan expressed his view that “what has endeared the people of America to the people of Pakistan, despite the adversarial policies of the American administration, has been the support of the bar associations.”

Following his address at the New York City Bar, Ahsan briefly talked to SAJAforum about the lawyers’ movement, the prospects for reinstatement of the judges ousted by Musharraf, and the role of Pakistan’s media:

Continue reading at SAJAforum….

AITZAZ AHSAN, LEADER OF PAKISTAN’S “LAWYERS’ MOVEMENT,” TO SPEAK AT NEW YORK CITY BAR

New York, NY, June 27, 2008 — Aitzaz Ahsan, President of the Supreme Court Bar Association of Pakistan and the leader of the “Lawyers’ Movement” in that country, will speak at the New York City Bar on Tuesday, July 1st, 2008, at 9:00 a.m. Mr. Ahsan will discuss the latest developments regarding the legal system and judicial independence in Pakistan.

Last November, members of the New York City Bar, along with the New York State Bar, the New York County Lawyers’ Association and other organizations, rallied in support of the lawyers and judges affected by the imposition of emergency rule in Pakistan and the deposing of Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry. Mr. Ahsan will provide an update on efforts to achieve, as he phrased it in a recent article in Newsweek, “Justice for our Justice,” and the reinstatement of other members of the judiciary.

“We have been very supportive of the efforts of Pakistan’s legal community to promote judicial independence and the rule of law, and are delighted that Mr. Ahsan is here to inform the New York City Bar of the progress on those fronts,” said Patricia M. Hynes, President of the New York City Bar.

***

Who:

Aitzaz Ahsan, President of Pakistan Supreme Court Bar Association and “Lawyers’ Movement” leader

When:

Tuesday, July 1, 2008 at 9:00am

Where:

New York City Bar Association, 42 West 44th Street

About the New York City Bar
The New York City Bar Association (www.nycbar.org) was founded in 1870, and since then has been dedicated to maintaining the high ethical standards of the profession, promoting reform of the law, and providing service to the profession and the public. The Association continues to work for political, legal and social reform, while implementing innovative means to help the disadvantaged. Protecting the public’s welfare remains one of the Association’s highest priorities.

NYC Bar Association

More information:
Jayne Bigelsen: (212) 382-6655
Eric Friedman: (212) 382-6754

It’s been quite a saga, one that has captured the attention of an entire nation and indeed many people around the world. An establishment figure who, only a year and a half ago, seemed politically invincible now faces what can only be described as a stunning defeat. The path from there to here has been a remarkable one. The movement that helped bring about this moment has drawn its energy from groups who have surprised many observers with the breadth and depth of their political engagement. As this movement steadily grew over the course of 2007, the political climate accordingly intensified, culminating this January and February in an extraordinary campaign and a stunning set of election results.

But to the unending frustration of many, here we are in June, and the durability of any meaningful resolution remains somewhat unclear. Back in February, it seemed to many observers that at least the first round of that anti-establishment political campaign had reached a swift conclusion. But then February dragged into March and April, and a series of controversies and arguable missteps followed. Leading members of the Bush administration and their allies started to complicate matters by inserting themselves into the fray. Now that summer has arrived, a common question continues to be on the minds of many: will this drama really end any time soon?

The past week has finally raised hope that some sort of resolution is at hand. However, it is still not at all clear that the road ahead will be a smooth one — to the contrary, many signs point to a rather bumpy political ride. For one thing, political figures who owe electoral success to a grassroots movement will now be held accountable to it: the movement that fueled electoral victory will not look kindly upon any sort of compromise or power-sharing arrangement if such a deal jettisons its principles and values. And of course there remains the formidable challenge of dealing with a powerful establishment figure who retains intense support in politically influential quarters. With some erstwhile allies abandoning ship — apparently to the point of insisting upon an earlier departure from the political scene than anticipated — there has been much talk in recent days of the possibility of a “soft landing” or “dignified exit.” The end of this particular political chapter may finally be drawing near.

**

Whatever the fate of Pervez Musharraf himself, there remains the complicated question of how Pakistan’s governing coalition might roll back the legal and institutional changes that Musharraf imposed by decree during last fall’s Emergency. For the past few months, the leadership of the Pakistan People’s Party has been equivocal about its interest in rolling back Musharraf’s Emergency — indeed, to date the new government even continues to retain Musharraf’s Attorney General in that post. Last week, however, it was reported that the PPP had prepared a lengthy draft package of legal changes which includes, among other things, reinstatement of the judges ousted by Musharraf during the Emergency. Based on that draft text, which is incomplete and may still change, a few things are worth noting.

First, the draft proposal is an elaborate constitutional package, not an executive order or even an informal announcement of the kind made by Prime Minister Yousef Gilani back in March when he ordered the immediate release of the judges detained by Musharraf. The use of a lengthy package of constitutional amendments as a modality of rollback seems to implicitly concede that the legal regime imposed by Musharraf during the Emergency — what I have referred to as an “extraconstitution” — was in some manner lawful or legitimate. After all, as Babar Sattar has written, “[a]n illegal order is simply void and doesn’t need to be reversed through law making.”

While a cute textual argument can be made that the language of the draft constitutional package sidesteps any direct acknowledgment of the legitimacy of Musharraf’s extraconstitution, the argument seems a bit too cute by half, especially since in substance the package appears to adopt a number of the very changes made by Musharraf during the Emergency. The package would also at least partially indemnify against treason both Musharraf himself and the judges who affirmed their allegiance to him in violation of the Supreme Court’s order enjoining Musharraf’s Emergency — a move that would necessarily involve some measure of acquiescence to Musharraf’s extraconstitution. (Although the proposed amendments explicitly provide that Supreme Court or High Court judges who validate any extraconstitutional abrogation of the Constitution would cease to be judges and may be found guilty of high treason under Article 6 of the Constitution, the amendments appear not to extend those consequences to the judges who validated Musharraf’s extraconstitutional Emergency in November.)

Second, the draft package would limit the power of the presidency. The key amendments include a provision repealing Article 58(2)(b), a provision added during the 1980s by General Zia-ul-Haq which confers power upon the president to dissolve Parliament, and a number of provisions transferring specific powers from the president to the prime minister. These provisions would restore the constitutional balance of authority in favor of Parliament over the presidency, as originally contemplated by the Pakistan Constitution of 1973, and will be welcomed in many quarters. Under the PPP’s coalition partner Nawaz Sharif, Parliament actually repealed Article 58(2)(b) during the late 1990s, with support for the repeal coming from across the partisan spectrum. Musharraf, however, restored the provision following his first coup d’etat in 1999. The availability during the 1990s of a means by which the executive could dissolve Parliament facilitated a state of affairs that Husain Haqqani has referred to as “military rule by other means.” Especially over the medium and long-term, it certainly would remain to be seen whether the Army would go along with the elimination of these provisions.

Finally, while the draft package would reinstate the judges ousted by Musharraf, it apparently also includes a number of provisions designed to limit judicial independence and to place the judiciary under tighter parliamentary control, most notably by limiting existing judges’ terms of office and making changes to the judicial appointment process. For months, both Musharraf and the Bush administration have been actively maneuvering to prevent Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry’s reinstatement, and earlier proposals floated by the PPP leadership reportedly would have excluded Chaudhry from the restoration package altogether. When those proposals met with resistance from the lawyers’ movement, civil society, and Nawaz Sharif, the PPP leadership now instead seeks to limit the chief justice’s term of office.

A key issue lurking in the background of the dispute over the judges is the fate of the National Reconciliation Ordinance brokered by the Bush administration between Musharraf and Benazir Bhutto, which purports to indemnify Benazir and her widower, PPP Chairman Asif Zardari, and to dismiss all of the corruption cases pending against them. The legality of the NRO has been challenged, and an independent judiciary with Chaudhry at the helm may or may not validate it. So far, Zardari has largely seemed disinclined to take his chances about that.

So far, both the lawyers’ movement and Sharif have been relatively unimpressed by the constitutional package, regarding many of its features as too much of an accommodation with Musharraf, his extraconstitution, and his handpicked judges. Sharif has pulled the ministers from his Pakistan Muslim League (N) party out of the cabinet, although he has not pulled the PML-N out of the coalition altogether. The lawyers’ movement has scheduled a “Long March” to Islamabad for the coming week — and remarkably, over a hundred rank and file PPP members of Parliament have indicated their support for the Long March.

Today, Musharraf said that all other things being equal he would prefer not to be a “useless vegetable,” and that if the Parliament’s constitutional package leaves him without “any role to play, then it is better to play golf.” (His spokesperson, however, was quick to note yesterday that Musharraf “has not packed … his golf bag” just yet.) Back in January, after Benazir Bhutto was assassinated, Zardari said that he would groom their 19-year-old son, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, to take the helm as PPP chairperson, and that when Bilawal is “responsible enough,” then he, too, could leave politics to “go and play golf.” Lame duck President George W. Bush has apparently stopped playing golf, but has by no means stopped expressing strong support for his friend Musharraf. (Recall that Bush famously asserted that Musharraf had not “crossed any lines” during the Emergency.) Maybe Musharraf and Zardari will soon find themselves accusing each other of cheating on the golf course, rather than in politics — with Bush serving as caddy, reviewing the scorecard, and trying to broker a deal between them.

On Thursday April 24, 2008, the South Asian Bar Association of New York will host its fifth annual public interest fellowship benefit. The benefit raises money to provide fellowships for law students working in unpaid, public interest summer internships. At the event, the 2008 recipients will be announced. Information about past SABANY fellowship recipients is available here.

The guest speaker will be Muzaffar Chishti, Director of the Migration Policy Institute (MPI) office at NYU School of Law. Through his work at MPI, Mr. Chishti focuses on US immigration policy, the intersection of labor and immigration law, civil liberties, and immigrant integration. Prior to joining MPI, Mr. Chishti was Director of the Immigration Project of the Union of Needletrades, Industrial & Textile Employees (UNITE). Mr. Chishti has testified extensively on immigration policy issues before various Congressional committees. In 1992, as part of a US team, he assisted the Russian Parliament in drafting its legislation on forced migrants and refugees. He is a 1994 recipient of New York State Governor’s Award for Outstanding Asian Americans, and a 1995 recipient of the Ellis Island Medal of Honor. Mr. Chishti was educated at St. Stephen’s College, Delhi; the University of Delhi; Cornell Law School; and the Columbia School of International Affairs.

Join us at the TamarindArt Gallery on April 24th to support this important initiative! Tickets available here.

Fellowship Application Review Panel
Dimple Abichandani, Director of Program Development, Legal Services NYC
Sonia Katyal, Associate Professor of Law, Fordham University School of Law
Elchi Nowrojee, Director and Counsel, Credit Suisse

SABANY Public Interest Committee
Nisha Agarwal (Co-Chair) * Libby Babu* Sachin Bhatt * Sunu Chandy * Surya Ganguly * Sameera Hafiz * Anil Kalhan * Sandhya Kidd * Gowri Krishna * Vichal Kumar * Resham Mantri (Co-Chair) * Swati Parikh * Yogi Patel * Chai Shenoy * Amardeep Singh * Anand Swaminathan * Shweta Udeshi * Sunil Varghese * Hamel Vyas

Platinum Sponsors: Asian American Law Fund and Pfizer Inc.
Silver Sponsors: Asian American Bar Association of New York, Chadbourne & Parke LLP, Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton LLP, and Debevoise & Plimpton LLP

* * *

TamarindArt Gallery

When: Thursday, April 24, 2008, 7:00 p.m.

Where: TamarindArt Gallery

142 E. 39th Street

Tickets Purchased In Advance:

$50.00 for Private Sector

$25.00 for Public Interest Sector and Non-Attorneys

$15.00 for Law Students

Tickets Purchased At the Door:

$65.00 for Private Sector

$40.00 for Public Interest Sector and Non-Attorneys

$30.00 for Law Students

Tickets are available for advance purchase here.

If you are unable to join us April 24, 2008, please consider purchasing a $50 donation ticket to help support the SABANY Public Interest Fellowship Program. Contributions are tax deductible and will support the SABANY Fellowship Program.

A film screening and discussion with:
-

Kiran Khalid, documentary filmmaker
Anil Kalhan ‘93, Professor, Fordham Law School
Ali Ahsan, Speechwriter, United Nations

* * *

Smith-Buonanno Hall, Brown University

When: Fri, Apr 11, 2008

4:00-6:00pm

Where: Brown University

Smith-Buonnano Hall, Rm 201

East of Brown Street between Meeting and Bowen Street, Providence, RI

Sponsored by Brown South Asian Students Association and Brown Journal of World Affairs

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The Center for Place, Culture & Politics Presents

Demystifying Pakistan: Understanding the Current Crisis

A panel discussion on the military in Pakistani politics, society and economy; emergency, martial law, and the rule of law in India and Pakistan; the rise and subsequent fall of electronic media under President Musharraf; and the politics of democratic protest in Pakistan.

Panelists:

Dr. Ayesha Siddiqa, Visiting Professor, South Asian Studies, University of Pennsylvania and author of Military, Inc. : Inside Pakistan’s Military Economy (Pluto Press, 2007).

Anil Kalhan, Visiting Assistant Professor, Fordham Law School.

Kiran Khalid, documentary film maker and producer, Good Morning America and director, “We Are Not Free,” a documentary short to be screened at the panel.

Dr. Sahar Shafqat, Associate Professor, St. Mary’s College of Maryland and Member of the anti-Musharraf/pro-democracy movement in Pakistan.

Moderated by Saadia Toor, Assistant Professor of Sociology, College of Staten Island.

CUNY Graduate Center* * *

When: Fri, Mar 28, 2008, 6:00-8:00pm

Where: CUNY Graduate Center

Baisley Powell Elebash Recital Hall
365 Fifth Ave, at 34 St, New York

(Posted at Dorf on Law)

This week, the people of Pakistan have raised the stakes in their nation’s constitutional politics. However, the Bush administration, John McCain, and others seem not to quite understand the significance and meaning of this week’s election results:

The US and Britain are pressing Pervez Musharraf’s victorious opponents to drop their demands that he resign as president and that the country’s independent judiciary be restored before forming a government.

In a strategy some Western diplomats admit could badly backfire, the Bush administration has made clear it wishes to continue to support Mr Musharraf even after Monday’s election in which the Pakistani public delivered a resounding rejection of his policies….

Yesterday morning, a US diplomat based in Lahore spent two hours with Aitzaz Ahsan, leader of the lawyers movement, laying out the US position. [link]

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US Senator John McCain, the Republican Party presidential hopeful, has rejected calls for the resignation of President Pervez Musharraf following Monday’s elections, saying he is a “legitimately elected” Pakistani leader. [link]

Perhaps none of this should be all that surprising, given that both Bush and McCain have been wildly wrong about Pakistan at just about every turn. Still, after an election in which the Pakistani people are experiencing a profound “moment of hope,” having turned out in apparently record numbers to give Musharraf and his backers an anti-incumbent thumping unlike anything seen in Pakistan’s history, Bush and McCain seem to lack a grip on reality as they continue to stand by their man so obstinately.

Pakistan’s leading politicians have treated the Bush administration’s efforts to plead Musharraf’s case as the punch line to a bad joke, agreeing to form a coalition government that doesn’t include any lingering remnants of Musharraf’s party, as Washington would have preferred. Reports indicate that the framework underlying the new coalition government will be a revived version of the Charter of Democracy, a preconstitutional declaration signed by Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto on behalf of their parties in 2006 (and about which I’ve written previously). The Charter — which, among other things, pledges to restore the Pakistan Constitution to its pre-Musharraf state and proscribes its civilian signatories from seeking military support for partisan political advantage — was almost rendered a nullity by the Bush administration’s efforts to broker a deal between then-army chief Musharraf and Bhutto. With an agreement between the major political parties for its revival, however, the prospects for rolling back the legal and institutional damage wrought by Musharraf’s Emergency may now be considerably increased.

What would rollback entail? Personality-driven media reports in the United States have emphasized the possibility of impeaching and removing Musharraf from office. Such a move — which might be understood to implicitly concede the legitimacy of Musharraf’s highly contested reelection as president — would require a two-thirds majority vote in the National Assembly, which the coalition may or may not attain, and sufficient support in the Senate, which remains stacked with Musharraf supporters. However, in speculating about impeachment, these news reports seem to have the math of rollback precisely backwards. Far from being a “legitimately elected” president, as McCain would have it, Musharraf’s suspension of the Constitution in November “by use of force or show of force or by other unconstitutional means” has rendered him potentially guilty of “high treason” under Article 6 of the Pakistan Constitution. In the past, Pakistani coup leaders (including Musharraf himself after his first coup) have avoided prosecution for treason by strongarming the incoming parliament into amending the Constitution specifically to indemnify their extraconstitutional actions — an act which itself requires a two-thirds vote. Musharraf’s opponents, therefore, do not need two-thirds support in parliament to resist him. Rather, it is Musharraf himself who needs two-thirds support from parliament to avoid the possibility of being charged with treason. In a parliament now dominated by Musharraf opponents, that indemnification obviously will not be forthcoming, although it is possible that the parliament would be willing to indemnify him in exchange for his resignation or other concessions.

The only thing potentially standing between Musharraf and a treason prosecution, other than the exercise of prosecutorial discretion, is his own unilateral order purporting to indemnify himself. That decree is of highly questionable legality, but if the new parliament nullifies the many laws and constitutional amendments that Musharraf tried to decree during the Emergency, then that order would in any event be swept away as well. (Indeed, the Charter of Democracy pledges to go even further by rolling back Musharraf’s earlier constitutional amendments, some of which grabbed power for the presidency and the army at the expense of parliament and the prime minister.) Moreover, if the new parliament restores judicial independence, by reinstating the approximately 60 judges who refused to swear loyalty to Musharraf in November, then it is unlikely that the Pakistan Supreme Court would uphold Musharraf’s attempt at self-indemnification. (Most notable among these judges, of course, is Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, whom Musharraf, carrying himself in a highly presidential manner, recently called “the scum of the earth, a third-rate man, a corrupt man” in an interview with Jemima Khan.) A restored Supreme Court might even invalidate Musharraf’s reelection as president, as it apparently had been poised to do on the eve of his crackdown in November.

Would either the invalidation of Musharraf’s decrees or the restoration of Pakistan’s ousted judges require a two-thirds vote of parliament? Both Chaudhry and Aitzaz Ahsan say no, and it would be rather odd if the answer were otherwise. (For his part, Musharraf has opined that “[l]egally there’s no way this can be done,” but we can safely leave his legal opinion to one side for the moment.) Even if Pakistanis were to avert their gaze from the extraconstitutional illegitimacy of Musharraf’s actions — and the election results seem to demonstrate, rather decisively, that they have not done so — there seems no reason why the incoming parliament could not invalidate those actions by a simple majority or even just an order by the prime minister, especially given the massive repudiation of the legitimacy of Musharraf’s Emergency by the Pakistani people. As Chaudhry has said, “I was deposed by an Executive Order and I can be restored by an Executive Order. There is no need of two-thirds majority of Parliament.”

Math aside, how far the new government will be able and willing to go in directly confronting Musharraf remains unclear. The extent to which the Pakistan Army will back Musharraf in any constitutional confrontation also remains somewhat uncertain. Ahsan and the lawyers’ movement have called on the new parliament to restore the ousted judges before March 9th, the one-year anniversary of Musharraf’s initial attempt to oust Chaudhry, and have indicated that they will conduct a “long march” to Islamabad if that doesn’t happen.

Clearly, the election results and formation of a new coalition government are only the first steps towards rollback. The intensity of Pakistan’s constitutional politics remains high, and the path to fully achieving rollback remains a challenging one. Still, many Pakistanis now rightfully feel, with Mohsin Hamid, “a cautious, soul-gladdening optimism.” Maybe even the “audacity of hope.”

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The Open Society Institute’s Middle East/North Africa Initiative invites you to:
NEGOTIATING HUMAN RIGHTS IN THE AFGHAN CONTEXT

Human rights advocates in Afghanistan must navigate a careful balance when promoting global human rights standards in a conservative Muslim society recovering from decades of conflict and extremism. Those charged with protecting human rights in Afghanistan must work in a context where Taliban and militia forces are resurgent, a powerful constituency of hardline conservatives support strict and narrow interpretations of Islamic law, and American-led forces continue to resist the application of international legal standards to their own detainees. A local court’s recent decision to levy the death penalty against a journalist accused of blasphemy further highlights the challenges of implementing human rights in Afghanistan today.

Featuring
NADER NADERY
FARID HAMIDI
And an additional speaker to be announced

Moderated by ARYEH NEIER

Nader Nadery is a lawyer, political analyst and social activist. Before being appointed as a member of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, he worked with the International Human Rights Law Group and served as a spokesman for the Emergency Loya Jirga. He is also a prominent leader in Afghan civil society and served as a representative to the Bonn peace talks. He is the recipient of several human rights awards, including the Reebok Human Rights Award.

Mohammad Farid Hamidi is a member of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission. A well-known lawyer with extensive experience on criminology and investigation, he also served as a member of the Emergency Loya Jirga, where he was responsible for developing rules and regulation for election. He has worked closely with the Judicial Reform Commission in the training of Afghan lawyers and judges on international human rights law and standards.

Aryeh Neier is President of the Open Society Institute. Prior to joining OSI, he served for 12 years as Executive Director of Human Rights Watch. He also spent 15 years at the American Civil Liberties Union, including 8 years as national Executive Director. Neier has served as an Adjunct Professor of Law at New York University for more than a dozen years, and is the author of six books and numerous articles on human rights.

Open Society Institute, 400 West 59th Street* * *

Thursday, February 28th, 6:00-8:00pm

Open Society Institute
400 West 59th Street
New York, NY 10019
Conference Room 3AB

Refreshments will be served

RSVP TO cepopenforum@sorosny.org
Please include your full name and affiliation.

Please join the South Asian Bar Association of New York for its first dinner series event of 2008:

Democracy and the Rule of Law in Pakistan in the Aftermath of Elections:
A Conversation With Ali Ahsan

On Monday, February 18th, Pakistan will hold general elections, culminating a year of tremendous political controversy and uncertainty but also a year of tremendous political activism and mobilized civic engagement. Will the coming elections be free and fair? In the aftermath of elections, what are the prospects for democracy and the rule of law in Pakistan?

Join SABANY for a post-election conversation with Ali Ahsan, a New York lawyer and SABANY member who is also the son of the leader of the Lawyers’ Movement in Pakistan. He recently returned to New York after spending two months in Pakistan, where his father remains in detention under house arrest. The conversation will be moderated by Anil Kalhan, visiting professor at Fordham University Law School.

Date:
Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Diwan RestaurantVenue:
Diwan Restaurant
148 E. 48th Street (Between 3rd Ave and Lexington)
New York, NY 10017

Time:
7-9pm

Admission*:
SABANY Members $25
SABANY Public Interest Members and Students: $15
Non-Members $35

*Admission also includes a 3 course meal.

RSVP to Swati Parikh at swatiparikh@gmail.com

Whose Children Are These?
(2004, prod. & dir. Theresa Thanjan), 28 min

Whose Children Are These? provides a gripping view into the lives of three Muslim teenagers impacted by domestic national security measures. One such program, “Special Registration,” required male non-citizens, as young as 16 from 25 countries, to register with the Department of Justice. Of those who registered, nearly 14,000 men were deported. The film introduces Navila, an honors student who fought to have her father released from detention; Sarfaraz, a popular basketball player who confronts pending deportation; and Hager, a young woman who faces bias and is spurred into activism as a result. Each young person comes from one of the twenty five countries profiled by the Special Registration program (Bangladesh, Pakistan and Egypt).

From the period of November 2002-December 2003, over 83,000 Muslim men complied with the program and nearly 14,000 were put into deportation proceedings due to immigration status violations. Although the program claimed to be a tool to increase national security, none of these men were actually charged with terrorism related offenses.

Through the eyes of three courageous teens, Whose Children Are These? brings to light the harsh realities faced by Muslim communities in post 9/11 America— including family separation, round ups, bias crimes, detentions, and deportations.

“Whose Children Are These?” is a presentation of the Center for Asian American Media with funding provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Additional funding was provided by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, the New York Foundation for the Arts and numerous private donors.

Fordham Law School, 140 W. 62nd StreetDiscussion with filmmaker Theresa Thanjan to follow. More information here and here.

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When: Mon, Mar 3, 2008, 6:00-7:30pm

Where: Fordham Law School, Rm 204
140 W. 62nd Street, between Amsterdam & Columbus Avs, New York

Sponsored by the Leitner Center for International Law and Justice, Fordham Muslim Law Students Association, Fordham South Asian Law Students Association, and Prof. Anil Kalhan.

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The Center for Human Rights and Global Justice and the South Asian Bar Association of New York would like to invite you to a Fundraising Reception for the CHRGJ’s Documentary Project:

AMERICANS ON HOLD
PROFILING, CITIZENSHIP, AND THE “WAR ON TERROR”

Space is limited.
Please RSVP by February 5 to aohihrc@nyu.edu or by calling 646-438-2341

Suggested Donation: $250 per person

What: An enlightening and intimate evening of refreshments, cocktails, live music from classical guitarist Daniel Reyes-Llinas, and a dramatic reading of testimonials by actor Riz Mirza and company. The performance will be complemented by brief presentations featuring Center director Smita Narula, documentary filmmaker Bill Horn, and community leader, Mohammad Razvi.

Who: Civil society members, concerned members of the New York Legal Community, representatives from the film industry, members of the human rights community. All donors will receive credit in the documentary, ranging from “supporters” to “producers.”

Why: Since September 11, 2001 expanded security checks have illegally delayed thousands of citizenship applications from Muslim, South Asian, Middle Eastern, and Arab men. This counter-terrorism dragnet is breaking up families, engendering fear and insecurity, and disenfranchising communities. Come learn about our documentary and lend your support to this important project to demand accountability, motivate policy change, and ensure immigrants’ rights.

NYU President’s Penthouse, 37 Washington Square West, 18th Floor, New York, NYWhen: February 7, 2008 (7pm to 10pm)

Where: NYU President’s Penthouse
37 Washington Square West, 18th Floor
New York, NY

Background:

Profiled Immigrants Delayed Years in Seeking Citizenship (CHRGJ Press Release, Apr. 25, 2007)

Full Report (63 pages), Briefing Report (12 pages), and a one-page summary in Arabic and Urdu

Event flyer available here. Pledge form available here.

This Article proposes privacy as a descriptive and normative framework to analyze the constellation of recent initiatives to expand interior enforcement of federal immigration laws. By expanding the circumstances in which individuals are expected to demonstrate their lawful presence in the United States, these various initiatives seek to transform the significance of immigration and citizenship status in day-to-day life from something largely invisible and irrelevant to something visible and salient in a variety of settings. This transformation, however, carries underappreciated social costs. Building upon scholarship theorizing privacy as protecting a set of social or structural interests, and using the Supreme Court’s decision in Katz v. United States as a conceptual starting point, the Article argues that recognizing and protecting immigration and citizenship status privacy in certain contexts serves valuable social purposes. While the Fourth Amendment itself may ultimately establish a weak constraint against interior enforcement, in other contexts courts and state and local governments have increasingly recognized and protected privacy interests in immigration and citizenship status in precisely these structural terms. Although these responses represent only a partial solution to the privacy-related harms that may arise from expanded interior enforcement, they contribute to a public conversation that may recognize more directly the social value of preserving zones in society in which status remains invisible, irrelevant, and private.

Ayesha Siddiqa is a military and political analyst and the author of the recent book, Military Inc.: Inside Pakistan’s Military Economy. She is currently a visiting faculty member at the University of Pennsylvania and writes columns for various international and Pakistani newspapers. She previously was a Woodrow Wilson Fellow and Ford Fellow, and has served as a correspondent for Jane’s Defense Weekly. She also has served as a civil servant in Pakistan and is the only woman to have served as the Director of Naval Research. Siddiqa earned a Ph.D. in War Studies from King’s College, London.

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When: Thu, Jan 24, 2008, 6:00pm

Where: Fordham Law School
140 W. 62nd Street
(Between Amsterdam & Columbus Avs)

Rm 430 B&C

Sponsored by:
Fordham Law School Dean’s Office
Fordham South Asian Law Students Association
Leitner Center for International Law & Justice
South Asian Journalists Association
South Asian Bar Association of New York

Fordham Law School, 140 W. 62nd Street

Questions? Email fordhamsalsa@gmail.com

What has been the fall-out of Benazir Bhutto’s assassination? On the next Your Call we speak with a panel of South Asians about the events since the bomb in Liaquat National Park. Bhutto’s 19-year-old son has been pushed to the helm of the Pakistan People’s Party. President Musharraf says elections will be delayed until February but can the weakened Musharraf stay in power until then? The United States has had close involvement in the politics of Pakistan for nearly four decades: what role should it play now? It’s Your Call, with Sandip Roy and you.

Guests:
Anil Kalhan in New York
Visiting Professor of Law at Fordham University Law School

Sharmeen Obaid in Pakistan
Documentary filmmaker and reporter who has covered the aftermath of terrorism’s rise in South Asia

Ahmed Junaid in Williamsburg, VA
Author and a leader in Pakistan’s expatriate community of liberal Muslims.

Click to Listen: Pakistan After Bhutto

(Posted at Dorf on Law)

This week, the Pakistan People’s Party named Benazir Bhutto’s son, Bilawal, as chairperson of the party, even though he is only 19, still in college, and will not be leaving school to become a full-time politico just yet. His father Asif Ali Zardari and two others will serve as regents in the interim. Certainly, young Bilawal has to be one of the world’s first major political leaders to have an active Facebook page at the time he entered politics. It’s hard not to understand and agree with Tariq Ali’s response to the news:

The Pakistan People’s Party is being treated as a family heirloom, a property to be disposed of at the will of its leader.

Nothing more, nothing less. Poor Pakistan. Poor People’s Party supporters. Both deserve better than this disgusting, medieval charade.

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That most of the PPP inner circle consists of spineless timeservers leading frustrated and melancholy lives is no excuse. All this could be transformed if inner-party democracy was implemented. There is a tiny layer of incorruptible and principled politicians inside the party, but they have been sidelined. [link]

In the immediate aftermath of losing the charismatic Benazir as its leader — and on the eve of a national election — I suppose it’s not altogether surprising that the PPP’s leadership would readily defer to the wishes expressed in her will by turning to a familiar name to serve at least as the symbolic leader of the party. (I’m not so sure he’s a familiar face to most Pakistanis, especially since he’s spent much of his short life abroad and out of the public eye. Indeed, as you can see from the photo above, his “Facebook” profile doesn’t even have a “face.”) And we don’t need to single out Pakistan — dynastic politics of one form or another are a way of life to varying extents in many countries, including such celebrated democracies as India and the United States. (One observer has even described dynastic politics as an “American tradition.”)

Still, as Ali also noted last week, “[t]o be dependent on a person or a family may be necessary at certain times, but it is a structural weakness, not a strength for a political organisation.” I suspect that it will take stronger and more durable electoral processes outside of the political parties, in Pakistan more generally, in order to catalyze greater internal democracy within the political parties. Would that be enough? Perhaps not. Indira Gandhi and her spawn retained a dominant role within the Congress Party even after being voted out of power in 1977, and of course the 2008 election here in the United States could end up replicating the “Benazir-Nawaz-Benazir-Nawaz” pattern of 1990s Pakistan with a crudely analogous (and longer-lasting) “Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton” pattern of our own. (Grover Norquist thinks we need a constitutional amendment to put a stop to all of this.)

But the importance of meaningful electoral processes cannot be dismissed altogether, since they do create spaces where other political leaders can emerge. Free and fair elections also would give the public as a whole something they did not really have in Pakistan even during the 1990s: an opportunity to hold parties accountable for their internal decision-making by voting their leadership out of political office, no matter what families those leaders come from. After all, contrary to speculation from as recently as the summer of 2006, we are not going to see Jeb Bush’s name on the primary ballots this spring, and were he a candidate, I can’t imagine that he would have carried the Bush dynasty to a resounding victory.

Related post: The Math of Rollback

Continue reading at BusinessWeek….

From Rawalpindi comes shocking news that Benazir Bhutto has been assassinated. Many details remain uncertain, but the horrific basics are clear enough:

Benazir Bhutto was killed at a PPP rally in Rawalpindi [along with at least 30 others]. . . . The election rally, with “foolproof security”, was held at Liaqut Bagh - a site which had already seen the assassination of another Prime Minister of Pakistan, Liaqut Ali Khan.

There were earlier reports of security threats on her rally - similar reports were issued before the suicide attack on her in October. [link]

Sadly, the South Asian subcontinent has been down this road before. More than once, in fact — but one moment stands out as eerily reminiscent:

[An] heir to a miraculous name, disappeared in a fiendish conjurer’s trick: amid the theatrics of an electioneering stop, and in the puff of smoke from a bomb… Apart from the egregious act of violence that killed [the former Prime Minister], the bloody shirt of extremism and communal vengeance has been threatening to supersede all norms of democracy in the nation. [link]

So wrote Time in 1991, when another former prime minister (Rajiv Gandhi, in India) was killed on the campaign trail by a suicide bomber. During the late 1980s, Gandhi and Bhutto together were regarded by many in India and Pakistan with a fair bit of hope. Youthful and energetic, the two “got along famously” in their first summit meeting and were seen by many as ushering in generational change, a new set of leaders capable, together, of moving the subcontinent in different directions. The days of such extreme optimism passed long ago. But tragically, both of them now are linked with each other in death as well.

When Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated, some observers fretted over the “uncertainty” and the “leadership vacuum” that his death may have created within the Congress Party, much as they fret today over the future of Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party and democratic leadership in Pakistan more generally. The circumstances are by no means identical, but certainly one need not lose all hope that democratic leaders can and will emerge in Pakistan in the aftermath of this tragedy, that the prospects for democracy in Pakistan did not rest on Benazir Bhutto’s shoulders alone. Indeed, the lawyers’ movement and the vigorous resistance of Pakistan’s civil society to Musharraf’s Emergency demonstrate that many such leaders already are present — that the mainstream, democratic instincts and aspirations in Pakistan may well be durable enough to survive the assassination of one charismatic and pioneering leader. If, that is, those instincts and aspirations are given space to flourish, rather than simply to grasp for dear life. One can only hope that going forward the United States will belatedly recognize this fact, nurturing and supporting the democratic processes and civil society institutions that have been producing those leaders, rather than simply propping up particular personalities, out of perceived expediency, even as they tear the institutions of democracy and civil society asunder.

For now, I leave you with the remembrances of Benazir Bhutto offered by Adil Najam:

[A]ll of these [questions] are paled by thoughts about Benazir as a person. The woman. The wife. The mother. The human being. What about her?

I have not always agreed with her politically but there was always a respect for her political courage. I had met her many times, first as a journalist covering her when she had just returned to Pakistan in the Zia era and before she became Prime Minister. Later a number of times in her two stints as Prime Minister and then a few times during her exile. In that last period she toll to referring to me as “Professor sahib” and some of our exchanges were more candid (at least on my part) than they had been earlier.

At a human level this is a tragedy like no other. Only a few days ago I was mentioning to someone that the single most tragic person in all of Pakistan - maybe all the world - is Nusrat Bhutto. Benazir’s mother. Think about it. Her husband, killed. One son poisoned. Another son assasinated. One daughter dead possibly of drug overdose. Another daughter rises to be Prime Minister twice, but jailed, exiled, and finally gunned down.

and by Manan Ahmed:

In the nation whose history is dotted by military coups, assassinations and hangings of public figures, this is surely the bloodiest stain. She titled her autobiography, the Daughter of Destiny - but surely she deserved a fate other than the destiny of her father and Liaqut Ali Khan. It is truly a tragedy and a revelation of the chaos gripping the nation.

And finally, with the hope that the political violence emerging in response to Bhutto’s assassination — all too common in the subcontinent — will soon subside.

Yesterday, former General Pervez Musharraf purported to “lift” the Emergency he declared on November 3rd, claiming that he has now “revived” the Pakistan Constitution of 1973. Members of Pakistan’s civil society are not particularly impressed. And they shouldn’t be. Musharraf’s claim to have “lifted” the Emergency makes sense only if we understand the word “lifted” to mean “institutionalized and made permanent via a one-man constitutional convention.” Most of the actions he has taken during the last six weeks remain in place, and even his orders purporting to “lift” the Emergency simultaneously implement a raft of permanent constitutional amendments designed to consolidate his grip on power. Let’s take stock of where things now stand compared to where they stood on November 2nd:

1. Musharraf has laundered the judiciary by dismissing all Supreme Court and High Court judges who refused to take a new oath of loyalty to his provisional constitutional regime and packing the courts with pliant judges who have explicitly pledged their loyalty to him. Through a unilateral amendment to the Pakistan Constitution itself, he has now made the dismissal of those judges permanent. In the process, he has prevented the Supreme Court of Pakistan from adjudicating his eligibility to hold office and undermined its ability to proceed with a credible investigation into the hundreds of disappearances that have occurred since 2001 in connection with the “war on terror” (as discussed in the documentary “Missing in Pakistan,” which is linked above).
2. He has detained thousands of regime opponents, apparently subjecting some of them to torture. While most of these individuals have now been released, several leading lawyers remain under house arrest, and the message to would-be regime opponents has been crystal clear.
3. He has laundered the media, forcing independent television networks off the air and permitting their return only on condition that they (1) muzzle themselves by pulling programming critical of his regime and (2) abide by a “code of conduct” that permits the government to suspend their operations more or less at will.
4. He has amended the Army Act, with retrospective effect from January 2003, to permit civilians to be tried in military tribunals for offenses ranging “from murder to libel,” including “expressions or acts that are ‘prejudicial’ or offensive towards the government.” [link]
5. He has amended the Legal Practitioners and Bar Councils Act in a manner that permits the executive to interfere with the operations of independent bar associations and makes it easier to target lawyers critical of the government with allegations of misconduct. [link]
6. He has unilaterally and permanently amended the Pakistan Constitution to restructure the judiciary, changing the eligibility requirements for individuals to become High Court judges and creating a new Islamabad High Court in order to facilitate easy transfer of cases from other High Courts to a more favorable jurisdiction “composed of judges that the government has handpicked.” [link]
7. He has unilaterally and permanently amended the Constitution to validate his eligibility to hold office as President.
8. And last but not least, he has unilaterally and permanently amended the Constitution to indemnify his self-consciously extraconstitutional actions. Under Article 6 of the Pakistan Constitution, those actions constitute “high treason” insofar as they entail an effort to abrogate or subvert the Constitution “by use of force or show of force or by other unconstitutional means.” However, under Musharraf’s new amendment, the Constitution now provides that all laws and actions during the past six weeks are now “affirmed, adopted and declared to have been validly made … and notwithstanding anything contained in the Constitution shall not be called in question in any court or forum on any ground whatsoever.” Even after Musharraf’s first coup, he was not so brazen as to unilaterally indemnify himself, instead obtaining that indemnification (albeit with some difficulty, even though it was packed with his supporters) from Parliament, as General Zia ul-Haq had before him. This time, however, Musharraf is insisting that Parliament’s prior decisions to indemnify these acts of treason were merely “ceremonial,” arguing somewhat oddly through his law minister that “not a single provision in the Constitution required [Parliamentary] validation of measures done through extra-constitutional steps.” [link] (I suppose that technically might be true, but of course, that also just might be because under the Constitution, “extra-constitutional steps” are, well, unconstitutional, full stop — indeed, it would be surprising if the Constitution contemplated the “validation” of such steps by anyone.)

The effects of these changes will long outlast the “lifting” of the Emergency. And so, the laundering of Pakistan’s institutions is nearly complete; all that appears to remain is the spin cycle, in which Musharraf and his allies publicly congratulate themselves for how much they have done to promote democracy in Pakistan. The Bush administration and “America’s Sweetheart” Benazir Bhutto have duly cooperated with Musharraf’s spinning, with both welcoming his actions this weekend as a positive step with little or no accompanying criticism. Of course, neither response is all that surprising at this point. Not only has Bush himself said that Musharraf has not “crossed any lines,” but some press reports have even suggested that Western governments have quietly endorsed Musharraf’s purge of the judiciary because they, too, have been concerned about Pakistani judges acting too independently. For her part, Benazir has scrupulously avoided calling for the restoration of Pakistan’s purged judges, stating — to considerable disbelief — that she believes in the independence of the judiciary but that the “personalities” of those judges do not matter. And flip-flopping like Mitt Romney, Benazir now even has suggested that she might be willing and able to work with the General after all.

As for the upcoming elections, Musharraf insists that they will be free and fair. Early indications — including the use of the police to hang up posters for Musharraf’s party, as seen in the above photo — are not promising. Adil Najam seems right on the money in describing the “lifting” of the Emergency as “three steps back, half a step forward.”

No, I’m not referring to any physical damage associated with my jaw dropping to the floor upon hearing George Bush say that Gen. Mr. Pervez Musharraf has not “crossed any lines” in his full-scale assault on civil society. There are so many things to be said in response to that ridiculous statement, but one particularly disturbing irony seems to stand out.

We have long known that when it comes to torture, the Bush administration has at times drawn “the line” in a rather peculiar place, at one point seeking to limit the definition of torture to acts “likely to result in permanent and serious physical damage … ris[ing] to the level of death, organ failure, or the permanent impairment of a significant body function.” Well, after several weeks in which many have feared that Musharraf, Shaukat Aziz, and their agents might be perpetrating unspeakable crimes in Pakistan’s jails, it now appears that Musharraf has crossed even the dubious “line” drawn by the 2002 Office of Legal Counsel memo:

Former president Supreme Court Bar Association of Pakistan Mr Munir A. Malik has suffered renal failure. He has been shifted to ICU in PIMS where he is undergoing kidney dialysis. In panic, Musharraf has lifted the detention orders on Munir A. Malik.

For the last 2 weeks leading lawyers’ and HR organizations worldwide have been calling upon Musharraf to release Munir A. Malik from detention. Asma Jahangir had written in her letter (to HR organizations worldwide) that Munir A. Malik has been tortured by intelligence agencies.

The News is also reporting that Munir Malik has told doctors that he was served juice in Attock jail. Upon drinking the juice his condition start deteriorating. Since then his kidneys have failed and doctors are also concerned about liver function. [link]

See the interview with Malik in his hospital bed by Dawn News (in English) in the first video above. (The second video is the first part of Malik’s spirited address on the importance of separation of powers, sprinkled with Urdu but mostly in English, to the Supreme Court Bar Association earlier this year after the reinstatement of the Chief Justice of Pakistan. The full, translated text of that address and part two of the video are available here.)

Malik’s apparent poisoning is not the only atrocity committed by Musharraf against his civil society opponents:

Mr. Munir is one of four eminent advocates, all of whom were linked to the Chief Justice’s restoration struggle, who were incarcerated on November 3rd — the other three being Mr. Ali Ahmed Kurd, Justice (Retd.) Tariq Mahmood and Aitzaz Ahsan. There are persistent rumours that Mr. Kurd and Justice Mahmood have been subjected to barbaric physical torture. These rumours are lent credence by the fact that Justice (Retd.) Tariq Mahmood too has been shifted to Services Hospital from jail in ‘critical condition’ on the night of November 25th. Furthermore, no family members or media personnel have been allowed to visit him either in jail or hospital. Mr. Aitzaz Ahsan was seen in public on November 25th when he came to submit his nomination papers under police guard. He appeared visibly ‘pale and weakened’, according to eye witnesses, as he was escorted to and from the Sessions Court, Lahore, having been shifted to house arrest from Adiyala Jail. [link]

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The moving ordeal of an ailing but defiant Justice (retd) Tariq Mahmood lodged in the Sahiwal jail for the last 23 days, as narrated by his struggling wife, brought tears to the eyes of hundreds of members of the civil society and political workers who watched the ‘Capital Talk’ show of Geo TV live on the footpath of Islamabad on Monday.

Justice Tariq, once the top judge of the Balochistan High Court, who had resigned after refusing to conduct the controversial presidential referendum of 2002, was now being made to sleep on the cold floor of the Sahiwal jail to break his nerves and punish him for his acts of defiance since he quit the judiciary to register his protest.

As his health condition deteriorated in the Sahiwal jail, Tariq Mahmood who is said to have developed severe back pain has now been rushed to a Lahore hospital for his medical tests.

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‘My 11-year-old son keeps asking daily since November 3, where is my father. Now I have run out of words to tell him where is he,’ Mrs Tariq said in a choking voice that greatly moved all the participants of the talk show. [link]

More links and a roundup are available at Sepia Mutiny.

So it seems that we are left to ask, yet again: exactly where does the Bush administration draw “the line” when it comes to torture? It is also worth recalling in this context that Musharraf’s original attempt to sack Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry came exactly one day after Chaudhry made clear that the Supreme Court of Pakistan would investigate the disappearances of hundreds of individuals since 2001. The Bush administration was silent about Musharraf’s interference with judicial independence then, and it continues to be silent about the importance of judicial independence in Pakistan today. Many Pakistani citizens, of course, have not been.

So Gen. Musharraf appears to be engaged in a global war on journalism after all. Two weeks after commencing his crackdown on Pakistani civil society, which effectively turned news into contraband, Musharraf has now begun to allow some independent television networks back onto cable television — but only if they agree to a number of conditions, such as terminating television shows critical of the regime and signing an undertaking of “good behavior” permitting the government to interfere with their operations, seize their equipment, and terminate their licenses at any time. Some networks are now back on the air, albeit in “laundered” form — AAJ TV, for example, is back but without a number of leading talk shows that have been critical of Musharraf. (The BBC and CNN are also back, but since they, along with Dawn News, are broadcast in English, the authorities are not as concerned about what they might say in their broadcasts.)

Musharraf’s imposition of these conditions is the direct analogue for the electronic media of the mechanisms he has used to purge the judiciary. Just as he has required all judges to swear new oaths of allegiance to his provisional constitutional order if they wish to remain in office, Musharraf has now imposed a requirement on all “independent” media that in practice they swear loyalty to him if they wish to remain on the air. Having packed the courts with his “pocket judges,” Musharraf now is trying to make sure that the only television journalists being seen and heard are his own “pocket journalists.” But Musharraf is apparently not content with preventing individuals within Pakistan from hearing voices critical of his regime. Rather, he has now made his war on civil society truly a global one, pressuring the government of the United Arab Emirates to shut down two Pakistani television networks, GEO TV and ARY Digital, which originate and uplink from Dubai and are watched by many individuals outside of Pakistan:

Informed sources said President Pervez Musharraf himself intervened to stop all GEO news transmissions from Dubai, after a two-week standoff in Pakistan during which all major news networks were shut down by cable operators, who are directly controlled by the Pakistani authorities.

The shutting down of the Geo News was universally condemned by almost every political party and member of the civil society minutes before the anchors, almost in tears, signed off.

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Popular news anchors came on Geo News around midnight Pakistan time to announce that their channel had been ordered to go off the air as result of the continued deadlock between the Pakistani authorities and the media channels, following the imposition of the emergency in the country.

In Pakistan all GEO channels were blocked by the military regime after the imposition of the emergency but on Friday two main channels, DAWN News and AAJ were back on air, with AAJ announcing that two its most popular talks shows, hosted by Talat Hussain, Nusrat Javeed and Mushtaq Mihas, were suspended temporarily. [link]

With his personal intervention with the UAE government to shut down GEO and ARY Digital, Musharraf has made his battle with civil society a global one. Many thousands of individuals all over the world, including Pakistani expatriates and others, have long relied upon these networks, and while Musharraf during the past two weeks has shut down domestic access to these channels via cable television, these channels have continued to be available via live video streams online and directly via satellite. As a result, many in Pakistan have continued to obtain news from these TV networks — either directly, via live internet streams or satellite dish reception, or indirectly, as news is relayed to Pakistani citizens via phone calls and text messages from friends and relatives outside of Pakistan.

Ironically, when launching several years ago, both networks decided to originate and uplink their broadcasts from Dubai in part to try to minimize interference by the government of Pakistan with their operations. Musharraf’s willingness to intimidate the UAE government shows that strategy wasn’t foolproof. But one also has to wonder whether Bush administration officials tried to exert any counter-pressure with UAE officials and failed, or whether they simply did not bother. Neither possibility inspires much confidence.

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Western journalists and Bush administration officials persist in calling Musharraf’s coup a declaration of “emergency,” as if it were responding to a temporary exigency and as if normalcy could be restored simply by “lifting” Musharraf’s extraconstitutional declaration. It should be crystal clear by now that the damage to civil society wrought by Musharraf cannot be cured simply by “lifting” the current state of affairs. The proper constitutional category to describe Musharraf’s extraconstitutional declaration is not “emergency,” but rather “high treason,” which Article 6 of the Pakistan Constitution defines as any move to “abrogate[] or attempt[] or conspire[] to abrogate, subvert[] or attempt[] or conspire[] to subvert the Constitution by use of force or show of force or by other unconstitutional means.” The appropriate Western response under such circumstances therefore should not simply be to call upon Musharraf to “lift” his self-described emergency, but rather to insist upon “rollback” of Musharraf’s extraconstitutional — and now transnational — effort to systematically undermine Pakistan’s civil society institutions.

UPDATE (11/19/2007): A protest vigil outside GEO’s offices in Karachi apparently attracted close to 1500 people:

The vigil itself started off at around 7pm but I am told the crowd was present there well before the specified time, when I reached there it was truly an amazing sight in the entire lane you could only see candles lit with quite a few heavy speakers blarring the signature Geo song Jeenay Do.

There were approximately well over 1500 people present most honding some sort of placard denocning the martial law but practiclaly everyone had a candle and sang the song Jeenay Do. There were a number of large TV screens showing the live feed from Geo which was being streamed via the internet. The best part of the vigil was when the Geo Musharraf-lookalike took to the stage and had some fun with the crowd with some unique imitations of the dictator. It was good to see people coming out to raise their voice against the censorship of the media. [link]