Musharraf’s Interview: cacophony in disgust?
In an interview with BBC Urdu on 3rd August former president General (retd) Pervez Musharraf said "Military rule has always brought the country back on track, whereas civilian governments have always derailed it."
He said "Dictators set the country right, whereas civilian governments brought it to ruins." Former dictator added that whenever a martial law was declared in Pakistan, "it was the need of the hour".
During the interview, Musharraf lauded the rules of former military dictators Field Marshal Ayub Khan and Gen Ziaul Haq. He also said that his(Zia’s) decision to help America and the mujahideen against the Soviet Union at the time of the Afghanistan invasion was a correct move.
Spoke about his 1999 coup d'état he said, "The coup was staged because it was the demand of the country's people". "The people come running to the army to be saved; people come to me asking to be saved," he said.
Musharraf further criticised former prime minister Nawaz Sharif's India policy, saying it was a "total sell-out policy". He also said "India is involved in Balochistan. Whoever works actively against the welfare of Pakistan is against the country and should be killed,"
Despite pending court cases against him, the former dictator left Pakistan in March 2016, saying he would return "in a few weeks" after medical treatment.
Musharraf is facing a treason trial for clamping emergency in the country on Nov 3, 2007.
Musharraf : Most notorious human rights violator of present time
Musharraf has the distinction of having suspended constitutional rule twice during his time in office. After declaring a state of emergency in November 2007, he began a violent crackdown and ordered the detention of some 10,000 political opponents –including most of the country’s Supreme Court judges. The fired chief justice, Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry, five other judges, and several leading lawyers remained under house arrest and were released only when the opposition Pakistan Peoples’ Party formed a government and took over the prime minister’s office in March 2008.
Under Musharraf’s watch, the Pakistani military and its intelligence agencies committed widespread human rights violations, including the enforced disappearances of thousands of political opponents, particularly from Balochistan province, and tortured hundreds of Pakistani terrorism suspects. Political opponents including high-profile opposition politicians were exiled, jailed, tortured, and in some instances murdered. Hundreds of “disappeared,” especially from insurgency-hit Balochistan, remain unaccounted for and are feared dead.
Musharraf persistently undermined the right to free expression and forcibly censored the media during his years in power. During the emergency, he shut down over 30 television channels and passed decrees muzzling the media. Security forces carried out brazen attacks on media offices. Throughout Musharraf’s rule, security forces repeatedly coerced, abducted, arbitrarily detained, beat, and tortured journalists working for both local and international media. Several journalists died in alleged custody of the security forces.
Global human right organisation Human Rights Watch continuously demands that Pakistani government should hold the country’s former military ruler Pervez Musharraf accountable for human rights abuses when he returns to Pakistan.
Legal proceedings are pending against Musharraf in several human rights cases. In November 2011, Musharraf was charged with involvement in the killing of Akbar Bugti, a Baloch nationalist leader who died under unclear circumstances while hiding in a cave in August 2006, after a long standoff with the Pakistani military. In February 2011, Musharraf was declared an absconder after a court in Rawalpindi accepted the interim charge-sheet from Pakistan’s Federal Investigation Agency, which named the former president as one of the accused in the assassination of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto. Musharraf has also been charged with the illegal removal from office and confinement of much of the country’s judiciary, including the serving chief justice of the Supreme Court, from November 2007 to March 2008.