Students are unfortunately by local people whenever they are frustrated. Hassan Suroor writes in The Hindu about the fate of Pakistani students in London (9 July 2009)
Nine Pakistani students are languishing in British jails because of an absurd diplomatic stand-off that neither Pakistan nor Britain appears in a hurry to resolve. They were arrested in April in connection with an alleged terror plot whose existence was never proved and were released in May after the police failed to produce sufficient evidence to charge them. But instead of being allowed to resume their studies they were immediately detained under immigration rules relating to national security and ordered to be deported.
So, why have they not been deported?
Britain which had no qualms colluding with American and Pakistani authorities in the torture of alleged terror suspects following the 9/11 attacks (there’s a damning High Court judgment about this) is insisting on a written assurance from Islamabad that these boys would not be tortured when they return home.
This, it says, is consistent with its long-held policy of not sending people back to countries where they are likely to be tortured. It already has agreements with a number of countries including Jordan, Libya and Lebanon that terror suspects deported to these countries would not be ill-treated.
Why is, then, Pakistan not willing to give a similar assurance?
Apparently, British officials went to Islamabad to persuade the interior ministry but were rebuffed. The Pakistan government is said to be angry that its nationals are being treated as criminals without any evidence, and it does not want to be a party to their deportation which it regards as arbitrary. In fact, Pakistan’s High Commissioner in the U.K. Wajid Shamsul Hasan and officials in Islamabad have publicly called for the students to be released and allowed to resume their studies.
There is a view that Pakistan may also be reluctant to give such an assurance because it would amount to acknowledging that it has a torture policy. Whatever be the real reason, the upshot of this lingering diplomatic row is that the students who should have been pursuing their studies remain in detention while their lawyers fight a legal battle.
The students, of course, have the option to voluntarily go back to Pakistan but they say they want to clear their names first and complete their studies. They have challenged their detention on the ground that it is illegal and in breach of their human rights as the government has produced no evidence to substantiate its claim that they are a security risk. Due to Britain’s peculiar terror laws that allow the government to detain an individual on the basis of secret evidence which is disclosed to neither the accused nor their lawyers, they find themselves in a Kafkaesque situation where they don’t know what exactly they are accused of.
But in a landmark verdict last month that is likely to benefit the students a nine-judge panel of Law Lords ruled that the use of secret evidence impeded fair trial. A trial procedure could “never be considered fair” if a party to it was kept in the dark about the case against them, said Lord Philips who chaired the panel.
Human rights lawyer Gareth Peirce, who is representing some of the students, says that the government continues to use secret evidence to detain terror suspects despite a ruling by the European Court of Human Rights that it is a “non-negotiable violation of a fundamental right.” She believes that sooner or later the British state would have to stop using it.
Human rights and student groups have launched a nationwide campaign to press for the students’ release. At a meeting in the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, last week speakers accused the government of abusing terror laws. Tariq Mehmood, a founder-member of the campaign, said he had just returned from Pakistan where he met the families of some of the students. They had made “enormous sacrifices” (some even sold their family jewellery) to send their children to Britain for higher studies.
“They are devastated. Other innocent Pakistani students in Britain are living in terror that they could well be targeted next,” he said.
Addressing the meeting over the phone from Pakistan, family members of two of the detained students appealed to the British government to allow them to complete their studies . Ejaz Burki said his brother Abdul Wahab Khan had finished nearly 95 per cent of his course at Liverpool University and was about to sit his final exams when he was arrested. Nasrullah Khattak said his son Abid Naseer was due to sit his final exams in September and his whole year would be wasted if he was not able to take them.
Dorothy Wright of the University Lecturers and Staff Union condemned the increasing use of secret evidence against “innocent” people in the name of fighting terror. She disclosed that a Sri Lankan Tamil Muslim student at the School of Tropical Hygiene and Medicine where she taught was told that his visa had been cancelled after he returned from a brief visit to Sri Lanka. He was now in prison although he had not been told of any charge or evidence against him. There was a climate of “fear” among Muslim students, she said.
Meanwhile, all eyes are on July 27 when the High Court is due to hear their bail application.
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