Publish Hamoodur Rahman Commission Report

Qutbuddin Aziz, Karachi

Having appeared before the Hamoodur Rahman Commission at Rawalpindi in January 1972 for nearly three hours, I urge the government of Pakistan to publish the full text of the Commission’s Report (1972) and recommendations, including the 1974 supplementary report. What has recently appeared in certain Indian newspapers and reproduced in a section of the Pakistani Press, purporting to be the Commission’s Report, strikes me as a deftly “doctored” version and it has created misunderstandings in some quarters in Pakistan. Its publication will be a proof of the government’s intention to ensure that the citizens of Pakistan have improved access to public records. In the UK, the government makes public almost all categories of official records after 30 years and the people have full access to the government-run Public Record Office.

As the Commission’s report and the records of evidence of those who deposed before it will run into some thousands of pages, for the time being it may be expedient to publish initially the main 1972 and 1974 reports and later on the testimonies, oral and written, of the hundreds of persons examined by the Commission and the many annexures. It will be a service to the cause of transparency in governance if the government could indicate, together with the publication of the report, what action was taken to implement the Commission’s recommendations.

To keep it a classified document 30 years after the tragedy is not warranted. Justice Hamoodur Rahman was one of Pakistan’s best judicial brains, a person of impeccable integrity and unassailable honesty. I had known him since the late 1950s, and as a good Muslim and an unwavering patriot, the traumatic events of 1971 in East Pakistan had caused him immense anguish.