Re: Ansaar Burni deported from India
shayad allama iqbal nay ansar burney jaisay logon kay mutalliq kaha hai kay
apnay bhi khafa hain mujh say aur ghair bhi nakhush
main kabhi zahr-e-halahal ko kah na saka qand
**
Ansar Burney: Pakistan’s Angel of God
by: Garrett Heaney
Ansar Burney was born in Karachi, Pakistan in 1956, the same year Pakistan asserted its independence as a Republic. He grew up in a country where a military coup led to a system of martial law that sustained a culture of human rights degradation and the imprisonment of countless innocent men, women and children — including Burney himself in his early twenties.
As a student at Karachi University where he earned his masters and law degrees, Burney was a courageous speaker against the system of martial law, and three times was imprisoned for expressing his beliefs. During his first eight-month sentence, he experienced firsthand the injustice of this legal system and met a population of humans who, like himself, were wrongly imprisoned and suffering the abuses of the Pakistani prison.
The experience moved him, and rather than learning his lesson or watching his mouth, Burney maintained his courage and continued to speak, even after two more arrests and consequential periods of imprisonment. After being released from jail the third time, he completed his law degree and invested his energy in defending human rights. He did this through the foundation of the Ansar Burney Welfare Trust and the Prisoners Aid Society, which dedicated its efforts to reforming Pakistani prisons and the release of innocent and illegally confined prisoners. Since its foundation in 1980, the Trust has been effective in the release of over 700,000 men, women and children across the world.
Over the years the Trust quickly blossomed into a cohesive force of six campaigns, collectively known as Ansar Burney Trust International. These campaigns are listed as follows on the Website: Persons Released, Women’s Rights, Children’s Rights, Forced Labor, Human Trafficking, Humanitarian Aid and Relief Activities, and Free Legal Advice and Services. Each arm of this organization has been effective in improving the lives and freedoms of humans both inside Pakistan’s borders and throughout the global community.
*Child slavery
**Burney gained recognition through a 2005 U.S. Department of State Trafficking in Persons Report, in which he was declared an international hero. The report includes a "Best International Practices" section where Burney is praised for his efforts to protect children victims of exploitation in sports:
"Ansar Burney has worked relentlessly to bring to light the plight of thousands of South Asian and African children trafficked to Arabian Gulf countries for exploitation as camel jockeys. These abused children, some as young as two years of age, are purposely malnourished (to keep them lightweight) and denied education. As a result of Mr. Burney’s efforts, the Government of the United Arab Emirates (U.A.E.) established its first-ever shelter for rescued child camel jockeys, and rescued 68 such children and repatriated 43 through the shelter."
The exploitation of children as camel jockeys has been an issue of heightened concern for the Trust over the past five years, as it has worked very hard to not only call attention to this form of child slave labor, but to rescue and rehabilitate thousands of children and return them to their rightful countries. As an extension of his work, Burney has helped in the foundation of shelter programs for these children where they reside after their rescue and receive treatment. Many of the children coming into these shelters are very young (as young as two years old) and suffering from injuries as the result of training, torture and abuse.
A July 4, 2005 article published in *The Nation (the Pakistani daily paper, not the U.S. publication) describes this practice in detail:
"Ansar Burney said that these innocent children are brought to the Middle Eastern and Arab countries from poor third-world countries, where they are either sold deliberately by their parents to the traffickers for money to support the rest of their family, or support their own drug or drink habits; while others are kidnapped and brought to these countries by the smuggling agents . . .
These children, living wretched lives are abused and tortured daily. They live and sleep in hot, crowded huts made from corrugated irons sheets, without electricity in the high desert temperatures of above 52 degrees centigrade [126 ºF]. Years of abuse has led these children to have their upper legs flesh rubbed away, their bones and body structures being damaged and their sexual organs destroyed."
This same issue was brought to the Western world’s attention in a documentary that aired on HBO as part of the network’s Real Sports series. Broadcast journalist Bernard Goldberg was guided by Burney into camel racing camps. According to a statement from Burney reported in the Daily Khaleej Times (A Pakistani paper), "The original film is a 30-hour movie which covers several aspects, while the edited version shown on HBO is only of 25 minutes."
Burney also proclaimed that "this film was enough to shake the entire world" — a fair assessment given the international attention it drew and the awards that it received. The documentary won a Sports Emmy in 2004 and the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award for outstanding broadcast journalism in 2006. The duPont is among the most prestigious awards in journalism and this is the only sports program to have received it.
The Trust’s success in terms of numbers of people freed, protected or otherwise served far surpass any organization within Pakistan’s borders. But numbers, while offering empirical evidence of accomplishment, really do not speak the volumes of individual stories of lives that were touched. So, in order to truly discuss the work and accomplishment of Ansar Burney and his Trust, we must begin with some of these accounts.
**Zafran Bibi: Raped and imprisoned
One such story is that of Zafran Bibi. Her story began in 2001 when she was imprisoned for adultery under the Hudud law of Zina (extramarital sex) after going to the police and accusing a man for rape. Her sentence — death by public stoning as called for by Hudud. While, according to official records, this punishment has never been carried out under Pakistani law, it is believed by some to take place in underground community punishments. Stoning, for people who aren’t privy to the details, is a punishment where the sentenced is buried up to his or her chest while the public throws rocks at his or her head until he or she either escapes or is killed. Being buried up to your chest, escape is impossible, so the stoning sentence is ultimately a capital punishment.
While the legal system of the U.S. and western nations makes deliberate separation of church and state, the Pakistani constitution begins: "Whereas sovereignty over the entire Universe belongs to Almighty Allah alone, and the authority to be exercised by the people of Pakistan within the limits prescribed by Him is a sacred trust."
The judicial system of Pakistan includes a Federal Shariat Court that is presided over by a panel of eight Muslim judges whose duty is to ensure that all laws represent Islamic law and to hear appeals from criminal courts based on Hudud law — laws governing behavior based on the Quran. For example, Hudud law punishments include beheading for murder, amputation of the right hand for theft, flagellation (whipping) for drunkenness and stoning for rape or adultery (i.e. zina).
Many human rights activists consider the laws of Hudud to be particularly biased against women. In the case of rape (zina-bil-jabr), in order for a man to be convicted, the woman must provide four male eye witnesses to the sexual act or the man must confess. In the case of Zafran Bibi, this is exactly the law that led to her imprisonment and death sentence by stoning. Bibi’s case is a complex one, riddled by her own illiteracy, her husband’s prior imprisonment for murder, her in-law’s feuds and a scandalous plot.
The story, as I gathered from multiple sources including both Pakistani media (particularly a publication entitled Newsline — comprised of journalists whose mission it is to "present the truth of Pakistan today") and a short article in Time magazine, goes something like this:
In the village of Kohat, Zafran Bibi was married to Naimat Khan whom, after their union, received a 25-year prison sentence for murder. Upon his imprisonment, Bibi moved in with her in-laws and was continually harassed by her husband’s brother Jamal Khan. When she reported the harassment to her mother in law, she was blamed for the incidents and became an outcast in the household. The harassment from Jamal continued, and one day while she was cutting the grass, he attacked and raped her. At this point, she demanded that something be done about Jamal’s behavior, and her father-in-law assured Bibi that he would support her. When it became apparent that Bibi was pregnant, the Khan family conspired against her.
During this ordeal, a man named Akmal Khan (same name as Bibi’s in-laws, but different family) proposed to Bibi’s sister-in-law. The proposal was refused and this fueled a pre-existing feud between the two families. The plot devised by the Khan family sought to clear Jamal of Bibi’s rape allegation by implicating Akmal Khan. In order to carry out the plot, Bibi’s father in law took her to the police station where he told her he would file the report against Jamal. Instead, he wrote a statement that alleged Akmal Khan had raped her 12 days prior, and the illiterate Bibi — unaware of what was written — legally confirmed it with her thumbprint.
Upon a doctor’s examination for signs of forced rape, it was discovered that she was seven to eight weeks pregnant — putting the time of conception some five to six weeks before the date of the alleged rape, which was pinned on the wrong man. When this information was reported back to the authorities, both Bibi and Akmal Khan were arrested for adultery. In court, Bibi denied that she filed charges of rape against Akmal, and told the judge that it was Jamal who had raped her, but the adultery charge stuck and she was sentenced to death by stoning.
As you can see, Zafran Bibi was pretty much helpless in the hands of this legal system. In more technological societies, where science reigned supreme over religion, a DNA test could have solved the mystery of who impregnated Bibi — while the test is intrusive and bears some danger to the fetus (requiring a teaspoon of fluid extracted from the unborn baby in the womb), the woman could theoretically opt to accept this risk with the understanding that it could spare her from prison or an impending death sentence. There was no provision for this under Federal Shariat law — particularly section 8 of the offence of Zina (Enforcement of Hudood) Ordinance 1979 — the law Cited by Judge Anwer Ali Khan who sentenced her to death by stoning on April 17, 2002. Bibi would have needed the necessary four male witnesses to make her rape allegation stick, or suffer the consequences. So, with baby in womb, she was imprisoned for months while Ansar Burney and other attorneys filed appeals to the court.
Eventually, in an unexpected turn of events, Bibi’s husband, Naimat Khan, came forward and claimed that he was the father of the baby that was the evidence being used against her in the case of adultery. According to a report published on IRINnews.org, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, a legal team from the Ansar Burney Trust, following the announcement of Bibi’s death sentence, came to Kerri Sheikhan (a small village near Kohat) and met with Bibi’s husband who had recently been released from jail. In the report, Ansar Burney stated "Her husband has admitted that the child is his, and was conceived during a meeting in jail. The jail authorities of the central prison in Haripur allowed him to meet his wife in seclusion." This information was used as the basis of Bibi’s appeal and ultimately led to her acquittal. The ruling of Justice Dr. Fida Muhammad Khan reads:
"Pregnancy and subsequent birth of a child by the accused lady whose husband had been convicted about nine years before in a murder case, and confined in jail; imprisoned husband had submitted an affidavit and made statement on oath, before this Court (FSC) wherein inter alia, he owned legitimacy of the child born during trial. Such being a highly pertinent aspect of the whole case, it was certainly noticeable that who else could better testify and be a better judge of the pregnancy/legitimacy of a child of a married lady than that of her husband. Accused lady also confirmed on oath, the legitimacy of the child. Hadd sentence, on such score, awarded to the accused was not maintainable and was set aside." – (Annual Report of the FSC, 2002, pp.61-62).
Murder in Macedonia
While Burney was able to help save Zafran Bibi’s life, sometimes it is too late and the Trust has to work to hold individuals and governments responsible for the lives that they take. Such is the case of six Pakistanis and an Indian man gunned down by the government of Macedonia back in 2002.
The reason: Macedonia’s plot to win favor of the American government and show its support for the war on terror.
No, really . . .
Only, the seven men were not terrorists, in any form. They were immigrants between the ages of 22 and 29 passing through Macedonia on route to European nations in search of work to support their families. Some of the men were carrying Quranic verses in their pockets. According to a story in the UK paper The Guardian, a mother of one of the victims said she had slipped two of these verses into her son’s pocket while seeing him off — one being the Surah Yaseen, to keep Muslims safe while traveling, and the other being the Naat De Ali to give him courage. Macedonian police later claimed that these were terrorist literature.
In the report, Burney is quoted saying "Who knows what other atrocities have been committed in the name of the war on terror. This whole affair has just been so incredibly evil."
According to an Associated Press report of the incident,"Since breaking away from Yugoslavia in 1991, Macedonia has been eager to win American political and economic support. It has supported the U.S.-led campaign against al-Qaida and has sent troops to Iraq."
The truth behind this killing is that it was not any sort of accident. It was a deliberate plot by former interior minister, Ljube Boskovski and three of his top associates who staged the encounter outside of the capital city of Skopje, then reported to the world that they had killed Al Queda terrorists.
Geoff Thompson a freelance journalist and correspondent of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (another ABC), reported that Boskovski "allegedly instructed his police chief to find immigrants who could fit the description of Islamic terrorists. The kidnapped men were then taken outside the Macedonian capital and gunned down. TV footage showed the dead men with pistols stuck in their waistbands as the Macedonian public and the world [were] told they died after ambushing a police patrol."
Ljube Boskovski is currently on trial at the Hague for war crimes. Ansar Burney Trust litigation is pending.
In Thompson’s report, Burney is recorded saying the Pakistani men "left for European countries in search of a better future. Having beautiful dreams in their eyes, were arrested at Macedonia’s border. The Macedonian police took them outside the US embassy in the capital Skopje, and brutally murdered them in a fake encounter and told the world that they were a terrorist, trained in Pakistani camps and had planned to strike American and European interests."
Pakistan demanded an official apology — which it received from the Macedonian government in May of 2004 — along with justice for the families of the six men. This is when Ansar Burney Trust International prepared to file a lawsuit against the Macedonian government in the International Court of Justice in The Hague (Netherlands) — the principal judicial organ of the United Nations.
"We will sue the government for $12 million," a figure that represented $2 million per Pakistani family, Burney told the Associated Press. Burney identified the Pakistani men as Umar Farooq, Syed Bilal Husain Shah, Mohammed Asif Javed, Khalid Iqbal, Ejaz Ahmad Qureshi and Muhammad Riaz.
The decision for the lawsuit came after the government of Macedonia filed criminal charges against former Interior Minister Boskovski, along with the other officials and policemen involved in the murder.
"A parliamentary committee in Macedonia already voted 6 to 2 to lift the immunity of former interior minister Ljube Boskovski. They have approved the state prosecutor’s request for his detention," Burney was quoted saying.
According to a BBC report on this trial, Boskovski, was originally charged as the main organizer of the plot and had fled to Croatia, where he was arrested and detained. The prosecutor in Croatia was reported saying Boskovski was charged with "having orchestrated and carried out the murder of seven economic immigrants in order to prove to the US that Macedonia was participating in the international war on terrorism."
On March 14, 2004, three weeks after being charged in Croatia, Boskovski was indicted for war crimes by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) at the Hague. The Croatian authorities turned him over to the ICTY where he has been detained during pre-trial deliberations. Boskovski’s case marks the final indictment of the Tribunal, where Boskovski is currently being tried for the murders of Albanian civilians during a 2001 Macedonia conflict. The trial began April 16 this year (2007) and Ansar Burney Trust litigation is still pending.
*Guantanamo Bay
**This is not the first time that the U.S. led "War on Terror" (aka "Global Struggle Against Violent Extremism") has crossed Burney’s path. In 2002, over 400 Pakistani citizens were turned over to the United States government via the FBI. According to Shaheen Burney, Ansar’s wife and Vice Chairperson of the Trust, more than 58 of these men were deported to the Guantanamo Bay detainment camp in Cuba, where they were held without formal charges. Many are still there today.
*Ansar Burney Trust has worked for the release of illegally detained Pakistani citizens at Camp X-Ray of Guantánamo Bay, Cuba
Ansar Burney sent a legal notice to President Pervez Musharraf condemning this practice and asking for justification under Pakistani law. In the notice, Burney writes "Only to please United States, you have not only played with [the] sovereignty, independence and integrity of Pakistan but also violated the law of the land."
Burney went on to indicate that the detainment of prisoners in Guantanamo is a violation of the United Nations Charter of human rights and the Geneva Conventions. The Trust demanded the return of all prisoners back to Pakistan, and to be given a fair trial under the Pakistani legal system. This notice to Musharraf marked the beginning of a campaign by the Ansar Burney Trust that is devoted to the release of the detainment camp at Guantanamo. Shaheen Burney thanked Musharraf for his cooperation with the Trust’s effort, which has led to at least 17 Pakistanis returning home.
