By Beena Sarwar | Inter Press Service
KARACHI, Oct 29 (IPS) – Poor infrastructure and communications are making it difficult for rescue and relief teams to reach scattered hamlets in the mountainous plateau area affected by the 6.4 magnitude earthquake that struck Pakistan’s Balochistan province at dawn on Wednesday.
Relief efforts were repulsed by a second temblor, estimated at 6.2 on the Richter scale that struck the area barely 12 hours later at about 5 pm, followed by at least four significant aftershocks.
Lt. Gen. (retd) Farooq Ahmed Khan, chairman of the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) said that the situation had been brought under control when the second earthquake struck.
“We had managed to find most of the bodies and provide relief to most of the survivors, including hospitalisation and first aid and tents and blankets. But because of the darkness as night fell soon after the second earthquake, it is hard to say what the situation is at this point,” he said in a late-night television show, talking to Kamran Khan of Geo TV.
At least 200 people are believed to be dead so far, a number expected to rise as many remain trapped under collapsed houses in scattered hamlets. The survivors have mostly taken refuge in the fruit orchards, braving the bitter cold of the mountain region, close to the Afghanistan border.
The army has provided six C-130 airplanes to convey relief materials including tents, blankets, food and drinking water to the affected areas, and put two army field hospitals on standby, said the NDMA chair.
The worst-hit area is the idyllic hill resort of Ziarat near the earthquake’s epicentre, some 70 km north-east of the provincial capital of Quetta. Ziarat is accessible by a single road that has been damaged by the earthquake, but the over a half dozen villages around Ziarat town are more difficult to reach.
Most of the houses in the area are reported to have collapsed, the main cause of death say reporters who reached Ziarat town. They also say there is an urgent need of tents, blankets, food items and drinking water.
Balochistan is Pakistan’s largest province in terms of area, but is sparsely populated and poor in terms of development and social indicators. Although rich in natural mineral resources, and natural gas, most of the ten million or so inhabitants — a fraction of the country’s estimated 160 million — of this rugged, water-scarce plateau region are tribal, nomadic herders or fruit farmers.
Situated on a known fault-line, the province is no stranger to such destruction. The devastation caused by the 1935 earthquake is part of legend now, when some 35,000 people were killed in Quetta, wiping out half the city’s population.
However, successive governments have done little to take precautionary measures or enforce safety regulations that would reduce earthquake casualties in the country.
British colonial rulers, recognising the area’s proneness to quakes, introduced the Building Code Act of 1935, notes M. Ejaz Khan, a veteran reporter based in Quetta. The Act included the stipulation that no buildings in the earthquake-prone area would be higher than a single-storey.
“But many buildings in Quetta are four-storeys high,” Khan told IPS over the phone. “In Ziarat, there are mostly mud houses, but several government residences go up to two or three-storeys high.”
The international community has stepped forward with expressions of condolence and offers of aid, including Britain, China, India and the European Union. Germany has already committed 315,000 US dollars as well as tents, blankets and other essentials.
Officials said essential items included earthmovers for digging mass graves and shelter and blankets capable to protect the survivors from freezing temperatures as winter sets in.
Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari has announced Rs 300,000 (around 3,600 dollars) as compensation for each casualty and Rs 100,000 (1,200 dollars) for each injured survivor.
However, many families affected by the devastating earthquake in Kashmir in the north-west almost three years ago are yet to receive the compensation promised then. Over 80,000 people were killed then, with about as many injured and maimed.
“Some claimants gave up and made the tough decision to migrate to other areas, while others took loans for reconstruction. Yet others, generally the poorest, unable to pursue any of these options, continue to live in tents or other makeshift arrangements,” according to ‘Three Years On, The Realities of People’s Lives’, a report released by the Omar Asghar Khan Foundation on Oct. 8, the third anniversary of the 2005 earthquake.
Peace and Justice Post 
RIGHTS-PAKISTAN: Civil Society United Against ‘Honour’ Killings
October 6, 2008By Ashfaq Yusufzai | Inter-Press Service
PESHAWAR, Oct 6 – The current campaign against “honour” killings in Pakistan led by anti-death penalty NGOs has support from lawmakers and lawyers pressing for modifications of Islamic law to prevent perpetrators from evading justice.
The NGOs take a principled stand against the death penalty under any circumstances. Some lawmakers and lawyers who support them in the struggle against “honour” killings may not be active opponents of capital punishment, although it is inconceivable that they would back Pakistan’s death penalty for consensual sex outside marriage.
The groups have joined forces over the alleged killings of five women in Balochistan, a region known for its highly conservative and patriarchal traditions. On Jul. 13, five women were kidnapped by armed men objecting to three of them — Fauzia, 20, and two unnamed schoolchildren between 16 and 18 — wanting to marry men of their own choosing, according to the Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC). In defiance of Umrani tribal elders in the village of Babakot, the young women, accompanied by a mother of one of the teenagers and an aunt of Fauzia, were abducted as they were preparing to leave to get married at a court in Usta Mohammad, a city 80 km away. The men forced them into a jeep with Balochistan government number plates. They were driven to a remote area where the three young women were allegedly beaten and shot. They were still breathing when the men “hurled them into a wide ditch and covered them with earth and stones”. The two married female relatives who tried to intervene were also pushed into the ditch and all five were buried alive, according to AHRC. On Sep. 24, the police, under intense pressure from NGOs and lawmakers in parliament, arrested seven people.
“We have seven suspects, including the brother of two of the girls,” Balochistan police chief, Asif Nawaz Warraich, told IPS. One of the arrested had allegedly confessed to the crime, although the police still had no other evidence. “The federal government is sending a top official to Quetta [the provincial capital] to investigate the murders,” he added. Senator Mohammad Adeel told IPS that the parliament human rights committee would be recommending legislation that would reform the Islamic Qisas and Diyat law. The committee was set up after heated exchanges in parliament over the alleged killings.
Qisas gives the victim’s heirs the right of retribution. But Diyat orders them to seek compensation rather than demand this. Both concepts are incorporated into Pakistani law.
Adeel said he was also proposing that those accused of “honour” killings be tried by judges sitting on the anti-terrorism courts rather than the ordinary courts of justice. “If that happens, the relatives of the deceased women will not be able to get away with the crime by invoking Diyat law.”
Adeel said he had told the parliamentary human rights committee that the police in Balochistan were facing difficulties investigating the case because of political interference. The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) and some lawyers would prefer the government to amend the 2005 law specifically outlawing “honour” killings, reining in the rights given to the accused under Qisas and Diyat. Since most of “honour” killings took place within families, agreements were being reached in accordance with Islamic law which undermined the ability of the state to prosecute those guilty. “We have been urging the government to reform the law,” Asma Jehangir, chair of the HRCP, told IPS. “But when our reform proposals were presented to parliament in 2005, they were defeated as ‘un-Islamic’.” The Peshawar-based women’s rights lawyer, Noor Alam Khan, also wanted the law against “honour” killings amended. She predicted that no one would be punished for the alleged killings in Balochistan because the families would invoke Islamic law. “All [those allegedly guilty] are relatives and they will be set free because of Qisas Law,” she told IPS. HRCP’s statistics on “honour” killings show that they have been increasing, in spite of the 2005 legislation. In 2007, there were 636 “honour” killings, of which 61 victims were under 18. In 2006, the number was 271. So far this year, HRCP has recorded 283. “Many more cases go unreported. Almost all go unpunished,” said AHRC. Anti-death penalty NGOs say the increase in “honour” killings is also a reflection of the growing brutalisation of Pakistani society. The death penalty, and its steady extension, has contributed to this. “Pakistan currently has 26 criminal offences that allow for the death penalty — as opposed to just two, for murder and treason, at the time of independence in 1947,” Human Rights Watch said, in an open letter to Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gillani in June, calling for a ban on state executions. Over 7,000 people, including 40 women, are awaiting execution, although most of these were promised a commutation of their death sentences in June. In 2007, 134 people were executed by the state in Pakistan.
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Tags:Asia Human Rights Commission, Balochistan, honour killing of women, HRCP, Pakistan, Pakistan laws, retribution or compensation
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