[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 184 (Tuesday, December 4, 2007)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E2469-E2470]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         ARTICLE BY SAEED MALIK

                                 ______
                                 

                            HON. ZOE LOFGREN

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                       Tuesday, December 4, 2007

  Ms. ZOE LOFGREN of California. Madam Speaker, I would like to enter 
into the Record this article by Saeed Malik entitled, ``U.S. Can't 
Support Both Musharraf and Ideal of Liberty.''

       Today, Pakistan is gripped by an existential crisis. This 
     crisis comes just when Pakistanis were beginning to feel 
     optimistic. An independent judiciary was taking root and the 
     fourth estate of the press was in ascendancy. Accountability, 
     long overdue, had finally arrived, or so the people of 
     Pakistan thought.
       The optimism was cut short this month when the U.S. ally-
     in-chief, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, fearing invalidation of his 
     recent election by the Supreme Court, dissolved the court, 
     closed the media and jailed dissidents by the thousands.
       The measured and somewhat muted reaction of the Bush 
     administration to this barbarity is not only morally 
     bankrupt, it is downright dangerous. The fundamentalists on 
     one side of this war on terror cannot defeat the 
     fundamentalists on the other. Fundamentalism in any society 
     will only be defeated and sidelined by moderates from within. 
     By supporting Musharraf, albeit tacitly, the United States is 
     sidelining the very moderates who must win this war. 
     Musharraf's occasional delivery of a wanted terrorist cannot 
     justify suppression of the fundamental freedoms of Pakistani 
     civil society. A society thrives when its constituents take a 
     stake in its well-being and its decision-making process.
       It has been said that terrorists hate us because of our 
     liberty and one must be either on the side of terrorists or 
     the side of liberty. If today we do not support the 
     Pakistanis who seek liberty, what will they think of us? Will 
     our government deliver on this slogan when liberty is at 
     stake in a Muslim country? Our goals are advanced by 
     demanding restoration of the Supreme Court. We must also 
     demand the immediate release of all judicial activists jailed 
     after the so-called emergency. Pakistanis must realize that 
     America stands for the rule of law and the liberty of all 
     people. A golden opportunity to win the hearts and minds of 
     the Pakistani masses beckons us. Sticking to support for an 
     increasingly unpopular dictator in Pakistan will only 
     solidify President Bush's 9 percent favorable opinion rating 
     in Pakistan.
       Although it has been generations since the CIA deposed 
     Iranian Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadeq and installed the 
     Shah, and decades since our government tried to forestall the 
     Iranian revolution, Iranians have not forgotten these 
     travesties. International relations must be based, first, on 
     democratic principles. Propping up Musharraf negates these 
     principles, fueling antagonism among Pakistanis.
       I have a personal stake in this sad saga. My 57-year-old 
     brother, Muneer Malik, a Santa Clara University law school 
     graduate, has been ``detained'' under ``preventive measures'' 
     in Pakistan's version of Guantanamo Bay. He is reportedly 
     critically sick and without outside contact. Muneer's crime 
     is that as president of the Supreme Court Bar Association, he 
     was in the forefront of the movement to assert the 
     independence of the Pakistani judiciary. Thousands of heroic 
     lawyers have met a similar fate. Rejecting the recent purge 
     of the Supreme Court, 13 of the 17 judges refused to

[[Page E2470]]

     take extraconstitutional oaths under a draconian 
     ``Provisional Order.'' Predictably, they were summarily 
     dismissed and locked up. The few opportunists who obliged now 
     preside over empty courts boycotted by an overwhelming 
     majority of lawyers. If this takes hold, the judicial purge 
     would amount to retaining the weeds while killing the 
     flowers.
       Pakistani citizens view the emergency proclamation as 
     Musharraf's desperate attempt to hold on. Democratic 
     stability requires an orderly, defined and predictable means 
     of transferring power. Musharraf, like others in the dust-bin 
     of Third World history, is trying to break this mandate, 
     subjugating national interest to personal power. Does the 
     self-professed ``enlightened-moderate'' appreciate the 
     difference between Robert Mugabe and Nelson Mandela? Why, 
     then, does he walk in Mugabe's footsteps?
       Muneer, who is supported by Santa Clara's and Yale's law 
     schools, along with the American Bar Association, said while 
     free, ``No army can stop the march of an idea whose time has 
     come.'' I urge our government to be on the side of an 
     advancing idea and on the right side of history. This is also 
     the moral side and the right tactic in the war on terror.

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