The farce continues. The detention of retired general Amjad Shoaib over charges of “inciting hatred against institutions” is just the latest episode in the arbitrary actions by a nervous and rickety security state.
The initial complaint against him had read that the retired general — in an interview on a private television channel — passed statements that “incited the government officials and opposition from performing their government and legal duties”.
It is absurd to imagine officers civil and military would stop doing their work on the basis of words uttered by anyone, least of all, the likes of Amjad Shoaib. If that, indeed, was a plausible threat, then we would have been in far choppier waters to be worrying about Amjad Shoaib at all. Regardless of what way one slices this, it’s a ridiculous step to arrest this octogenarian.
It is an irrelevant issue point that if the shoe were on the other foot, the retired general would have been cheerleading such arbitrary arrests. Only a short while ago, he was member of an institution-approved list of ‘defence analysts’ who could be taken on television talk shows for his opinions.
He was a supporter of such arbitrary detentions during the previous dispensation. But that should not matter when viewing his case. No one deserves to be treated like this, over so little, even if they were to endorse such actions for others.
We, as a polity, need to make certain decisions, and then stick to them. Do we want democracy? If yes, we have to accept it can be messy. Do we want freedom of speech? If yes, we have to accept people can say some unsavoury things. Do we want rule of law? Then we have to ensure that everyone must be subject to same set of laws all the time, not just when they have fallen out of favour.
