The new martial law regime of Pakistan imposed a code of medieval Islamic punishments yesterday. They include amputation of the left hand and flogging and will put this country - long one of the most essentially modern of Moslem states - into the same league with Libya and Saudi Arabia.
Exhibiting an Islamic fundamentalism that had not been suspected, the Government, which displaced Mr Bhutto early last week, has issued a list of penalties for various crimes, marking a significant departure from the country’s British legal tradition. It is also an indication of the political colour of the new military rulers.
The maximum punishments for crimes of banditry and theft is laid down as death by hanging, or amputation of the left hand.
Following the Libyan example, the regulation humanely adds: “The amputation shall be done by a qualified surgeon under local anaesthesia, in public, or in gaol, as directed by the court.”
Whether many Pakistani surgeons, brought up in Western medicine, will be ready to chop off the hands of fellow citizens remains to be seen.
The ordinances, issued yesterday, also lay down a maximum punishment of five years’ imprisonment, or whipping, for student agitators; 10 years, or whipping, for insulting, or molesting, women; five years for the publication of political materials; five years, or whipping, for political activity of any kind; and death for sabotage, or for resisting the police, or armed forces in the course of their duties. Other punishments include forfeiture of all property and various fines.
The heavier punishments can only be imposed by the higher military and civil courts, and all sentences of death, or amputation, are subject to review by General Zia ul-Haq as chief martial law administrator. In practice, the code may not be as brutal as it sounds in principle, and it will supposedly only be enforced until October, when the Army has promised free and fair elections.
But it indicates more clearly than anything else the political views of General Zia and at least some of the officers associated with him. The return to the Shariat punishments of Islam suggest that the new Government favours the religious wing of the Pakistan National Alliance - the party opposed to Mr Bhutto. This will certainly come as a blow to the secular elements in that group, like Air Marshal Asghar Khan’s Tehriq-i-Istiqlal.
The contentions of some of Mr Bhutto’s colleagues, that some of the Opposition wanted to turn Pakistan into a “Saudi Arabia without oil,” now acquire additional force. Despite Mr Bhutto’s late concessions to the Islamic fundamentalists, he represented that strong school in Pakistan which sees no solution to the country’s difficulties in a return to the simplistic restrictions of medieval Islam.
Air Marshal Asghar Khan’s party, the followers of the banned Awami Party, and even the Muslim League, essentially agree with him. Thus, the effect of the regime’s swing to the Islamic Right might be to introduce a new polarisation in Pakistani politics, or, some would argue, a new obscurantism. It certainly takes away from the claims of the military that it is preserving the political status quo in Pakistan, and merely to be introducing an element of fairness and impartiality into the contest.
