December 16, 2005

Defending our Own

A young Australian man named Van, of Vietnamese ancestry, recently was executed in Singapore after having been caught with heroin. For such an offence, there is a mandatory death sentence under Singapore law. Just as there is in Malaysia.
The island of Singapore was once a part of the Malaysian federation. On July 7, 1986, two convicted Australian drug traffickers, Barlow and Chambers, were hanged in Kuala Lumpur.
What is significant about the Van, Barlow, and Chambers executions is not the hangings themselves but the outraged and angry response of the Australian government and the Australian public which denounced the hangings of Australians. It did not matter a whit that these men were guilty of the offenses with which they were charged.
Australia is a close ally of the US in the so-called ‘war on terrorism’, yet the Australian government is constantly pleading for clemency for David Hicks, an Australian citizen, who continues to be held in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in a US military camp after being captured in Afghanistan.
Similarly, on May 5, 1994, Michael Peter Fay, a 19-year old American, was caned in Singapore for theft and vandalism after pleading guilty to damaging several cars. Fay was given 4 strokes of caning. US President Bill Clinton called the punishment prescribed by Singapore law as ‘extreme and mistaken’. 24 US Senators sent a letter to Singapore urging clemency. The US media gave it tremendous coverage.
The issue is not seen as guilt or innocence of the accused or to challenge the authority of overseas governments to apply their own laws against foreign violators. Rather, there is an expectation, even what many see as a ‘right’, that governments will defend, fight, and plea for their imprisoned citizens aboard. The point is not to abandon one’s own in times of difficulty.
In striking contrast, the repetitive refrain of Pakistanis in trouble abroad is that their government is uncaring about their plight and their public is equally insensitive. It translates into a lack of empathy for the unlucky.
When Pakistanis fall afoul of the law overseas, their own countrymen often are quick to judge their guilt and dismiss their plight saying, in effect, ‘they must have done something to deserve their fate’. At the same time, they are slow to observe the many dimensions of human misery during adversity.
After 9/11, the world witnessed the spectacle of Pakistanis being hauled up in the West -- most of them innocent of any wrongdoing. Elsewhere around the world, Pakistanis continue to be beheaded and hung for essentially non-violent crimes, seemingly without much care or bother on the part of their home country.
Pakistanis who have been imprisoned abroad have told me that being in trouble is a double jeopardy: persecution by a foreign government and being abandoned by their own officialdom, along with the sense of schadenfreude (a malicious satisfaction in the misfortunes of others) in their own community. It may be pertinent to remind sometimes that a Pakistani abroad who finds himself in legal difficulty does not cease to be a Pakistani.
A frequent topic of discussion is the issue of national self-respect which, undoubtedly, forms the crux of character-building and nation-building. It is also a key to building self-confidence. But self-respect is not developed out of thin air. It is action-oriented.
Helping and showing sympathy for the needy and distressed fellow-citizenry is one such step of maturity. It does not mean condoning or endorsing unlawful acts. It is simply the expression of common human decency. If we don’t care for our own, others won’t. If we don’t respect ourselves, others won’t.
We must emphasize that central to Islam are the values of compassion, mercy, and forgiveness.