Jirga injustice

an incredible article.....good research......should write one more on the history of the jirga.....ty

Who bothers about right and wrong in judicial decisions. One court gives a decision and the higher court reverses it. The decisions sometimes proceed like a pendulum. It depends on your luck where the pendulum stops at the last court and imagine at what a cost to the public, both as litigants and as tax-payers. It remnides me of a joke. A lawyer was aproached for hiring as a defence council for a man being tried for murder. The lawyer demanded a fee of Rs.5000. The party judging him by his fees as not fit for such a serious case employed another lawyer who charged them Rs. one lac as fees. One day when the party was coming out of the final court after hearing the final judgement, the lawyer which they had rejected happened to see them and enquired of them as to what was the judgement in their case. On being told that the acused had been setenced to death the lawyer said,``Oh! I could have obtained this decision only in 5000 on which you spent one lac``. But so far as cost factor is concerned there is no comparison between the Jirga and the judicial system. Even otherwise, if we keep in mind the adage ``Justice delayed is justice denied` our current judicial system is delivering nothing but denial of justice.

Illiteracy is the route cause of this kind of decisions. We are a nation in a habit to get fun out of other people trouble. Lack of sincerity, general abuse of power and selfish attitudes are route cause of this kind of incidents. Jirga system can be compared with jury system in America. It works there as it is applied in a controlled manner. Jury can decide with in boundaries of State Laws. But jirga has unlimited powers. The usually projected unlawful activities of jirgas are against women. The ruthless decisions quoted in article and many other are result of deep routed sexual frustration. Only education i.e. the moral training of masses not the formal schooling backed by governments sincere efforts can eradicate this problem.

Women have always been soft targets of people who misinterpret religions and will continue to be especially in the subcontinent, arab nations etc. Even when the Khalistan movement was at it`s peak, women were the first targets- they were banned from wearing western clothes and asked to cover their heads and those who did not comply were assaulted. The general response was, `` Well, they were warned. They asked for it.`` Ours is a harsh society. It spares noone specially women. It is threatening to society that women have freedom equal to men.
Someone in response to the article has written that we should see what percentage of decisions are wrong and how many are sorted out amicably. Yes, there must be some panchayats where they do give sound judgements but the whole system is highly fallible as panchayat members are not well versed in the law and so are prone to making wrong decisions. Besides, personal feelings will enter the scenario as feelings tend to run high in small communities and that will unduly influence decisions. Therefore the entire process is faulty. Also try telling a 6 year old girl raped by the 46 or 60 year old man that we are sorry, your Jirga made a wrong decision but it was only one decision among many wise decisions that they made!!!!!!! HP- what do have to say to that.

I tend to agree with Urstruly and some others on this issue. Jirgas, panchayats, amins or anything else comes into play when the formal justice system is failing. People go out looking for quick and easy justice. The paralell system thrives where the government fails in awarding justice. Now of cours in the process there are some very unfair decisions that are made and the consequent actions may cause suffering to the effected parties. However, at the same time there are numerous occasions where the council system works very efficiently.

Ms Sarwar: I have an objection to the extensive usage of the word Jirga by people. The term Jirga is commonly used by Pashtuns and does not apply to other ethnic communities to my knowledge. Most cases of gang rapes have seemed to occur in Southern Punjab and were organised by ``Panchyats``.

9 by HP
Very objective and impartial analysis of the pros and cons of the Jirga system. I personally had no experience of Jirga system but had much of the so called judicial system with al its paraphernalia. This much is however quite apparent that the Jirga system by its very nature is cheap, transparent and efficient whereas the judicial one is highly expensive, corrupt and utterly inefficient. So much so that the people nowadays say ``Why not hire a judge instead of hiring a lawyer``. As for their judgments it depnds on luck in whose favour the decision comes in the last court. See the decision given by our `Supreme Court` recently in the case of `Wedding meal`. As the story goes one judge wrote a decision declaring `Waleema or wedding meal` quite Islamic and thus setting aside the ban imposed upon it. But before he could sign it that judge was removed by the 17th Amendment. The succeding judge ignoring totally the decision arrived at by the previous judge declared the Wedding meal as an un-Islamic custom. He also gave a Fatwa that `Barat`, `Mehndi`, etc., rasoomaat were also un-Islamic, rather `Hinduana`. I wonder why he did not declare the marriage ceremoney also un-Islamic ``Nah bajta baans nah bajti baansr``. After all it was not introduced by Islam.

we have an arbitration system in india as well. its called the mafia.

Articles like this should be researched and effort should be made to bring out both good and bad sides of the story. I have noticed that before and here I see it again that Beena picks up a few instances and builds an ad-hoc story which may not be a true picture.
She reports four of five instances of gross misbehavior by some Jirgas but is it the norm? What percentages of good decisions are dispensed and what percentage of bad decisions are handed out by Jirgas all over the country?
Before that we need to understand the need for Jirga. In many countries such institutions exists where low cost and low value judgments are handed out within the community. One good example would be the Punchiat system in India with a variation that most of the punjchait members are elected and sometime they do have official recorder of the judgments.
There are several reasons that Jirgas are mushrooming in Pakistan. First and foremost is the cost of justice and delay in dispensing justice by the courts. We also need to look at the Police system in Pakistan which actually prevents many justice seekers to come forward. Especially poor folks in villages and even cities are disadvantaged. Often, it is whole lot easier for them to talk to some folks in their own neighborhood than to police officers who, in most likely cases would first try to avoid writing an FIR for a small matter and if he does, he will be have to be compensated for the time. Even the fkking munshi at a Thana demands money to write the report. Poor folks like any other people have problems, more problems than some stupid justice I A Rehman types would admit.
The opposition to Jirga also comes from lawyers, Judges and other official court related people. Simply, it is a pocket book issue for them. More cases go to the Jirga, less money these vultures like Lawyers and Judges make.
The police in Pakistan do not oppose the Jirga system because it takes a good burden of resolving local issues from them.
Beena presents a picture which appears to show that all decisions by Jirgas are bad. If we compare those decisions to official court decisions, we will find that on average Jirgas are making better decisions. They do fkk up sometime as they can be influenced by local rich.

Are formal courts immune from this? From lower courts to the top court in the country, Judges are deciding cases not on merit but on bid. Criminal Lawyers mostly, and some civil lawyers are lawyers because they have good connections in the criminal and civil justice system. All they do is find a judge who would accept money to decide the case. The poor folks who could not afford that money end up spending time in jails.
Before any attempt to reform the Jirga system is made, Pakistan needs to reform the judicial system first.

“categorically denounced it as a parallel judicial system which would only further institutionalise violence and discrimination against the poor and women, as it has historically done.”

This is all baloney. Like the current judicial system is not heavily weighted against the poor.
Poor don’t make decisions for themselves but they have to live with decisions made for them.
I fully support Jirga compared with the whiteman judicial system in Pakistan. I think the current judicial system should only handle criminal cases and civil cases should be transferred to the Jirgas all around the country.
The criminal Justice system must first be reformed and Jirga leaders must be given some training in legal matters.
These IA Rehman and Iqbal Haider types are vultures that have become rich by fleecing poor and they oppose the jirga to protect the money that comes to them.

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no - kaurasach they are literate not educated!

all of us are literate - we are numerate can read the news can read books etc.....but educated......it is a state of mind which (I will leave it to you to complete since you are a capable human!)

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urstruly #1 you should have gone into politics rather than DMG and economics...that was one hell of a stirring write up - speech....yes!

BS
Very disturbing. I hope there are many other damning articles as yours in the media to create sufficient noise on raising concern among ordinary people; so there can be support to put an end to this. There have only been sketchy reports in the media so far on these jigra `courts`. This medieval highhanded, informal and without legal sanction methods of `dispensing justice` have got to be pushed out; we are all getting more and more barbaric by the day, the more horror there is to acts and situations like these, the more they seem to abound, with no reduction in their frequencyand of course functioning with no impunity; and always the unacceptable terrible plights of women. what `civil society` if we don`t raise our voices in support to stop what is wrong.For my part, going to circulate your piece, hoping there would be awareness.That also I hope is a beginning and support.
A stimulating piece of Journalism.

education education education.......repeat till end of time

Education is the key. Education increases fear amongst the elite. Education increases fearlessness amongst the downtrodden.

Education the key to ensuring an equilibrium exists in society between the exploited and the exploiter, between high and low.

Educate and liberate. Liberation implies education.

beena:

Participants, including Justice (retd) Nasir Aslam Zahid, HRCP Director I A Rehman, and former law minister Iqbal Haider, categorically denounced it as a parallel judicial system which would only further institutionalise violence and discrimination against the poor and women, as it has historically done.

…i beg to differ from the distinguished and learned panel you quoted …imho jirgas are not parellel legal system but extra judicial men’s system that in collusion with the other exclusive men’s club-- the mosque and its sponsoring mullahs dispenses with pseudo and quasi-divine justice to maintain its unwarranted hold over the population

…jirga justice and fatwas are two sides of the same coin that perpetuates an unjust hold over the innocent population…

lve,

t