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By Thomas Houlahan
WASHINGTON: Sir Thomas More was a counsellor
to King Henry VIII of England. In 1529 he was
appointed Lord Chancellor. The following year, Henry
decided to dump his first wife in favor of a younger
woman. The Pope refused to grant an annulment of the
first marriage. When he was asked to sign a letter
along with leading English churchmen and aristocrats
asking the Pope to reconsider, More refused, as he
could see no legitimate grounds for granting the
annulment.
His position ended up
costing him not only his job, but his life. He was
beheaded in 1535 for treason. More’s story formed
the basis of a morality play called A Man for All
Seasons, which ultimately became an Academy
Award-winning motion picture.
I’m seeing a lot of
parallels between that play and the Raymond Davis
Affair. On 27 January, Raymond Davis, a former Green
Beret working for the State Department, shot two men
to death in Lahore. The 25-page charge sheet filed
by the government of the Punjab with the district
court includes statements of 47 witnesses who said
that Davis continued to shoot at the two after they
had turned to flee (i.e. after any possible threat
to Davis had ended), and one was actually running
away. Indeed, the autopsy showed that both men had
been hit in the back.
Davis called a
vehicle assigned to the US Consulate to come and get
him. He then got back into his car and fled, but was
arrested a short time later by traffic police. The
SUV from the consulate, while driving on the wrong
side of the road at high speed, struck a man on a
motorcycle, killing him. The vehicle did not stop.
Its occupants made no attempt to render aid to the
victim. Instead, they simply left Ibadur Rehman to
die in the street.
The United States
government demanded Davis’ immediate release,
claiming that he was a member of the US Embassy’s
technical and administrative staff, and as such, was
entitled to diplomatic immunity from felony
prosecution. It likewise claimed that the occupants
of the SUV were immune from prosecution.
The US demand is
where Shah Mahmood Qureshi, then the foreign
minister, got dragged into the story. All he had to
do was sign off on Washington’s contention that
Raymond Davis had diplomatic immunity and Washington
would be happy.
The foreign minister
had a problem, though. He knew that his office had
never accorded Raymond Davis diplomatic status. In
due course, he received a call from Secretary of
State Clinton, who said that Davis was being held
illegally in violation of the 1961 Vienna
Convention. Qureshi knew what she already should
have known. The Diplomatic and Consular Privileges
Act of 1972, which trumps the Vienna Convention in
Pakistani law, gives the government of Pakistan the
final say over who does and does not have diplomatic
immunity. He explained the situation and said that
he felt it was an issue to be determined by the
courts.
Next, Ambassador
Cameron Munter called Qureshi and told them that
he’d been instructed to tell him that unless he
signed a paper giving Davis diplomatic immunity (ex
post facto), Clinton would not meet with him in
Munich. Qureshi refused and cancelled his trip to
Munich.
In A Man for All
Seasons, Sir Thomas is told that he should sign in
support of the king’s divorce because the king wants
it, and that should be enough. More points out that
there was a debate going on as to whether the world
was flat or round. “If it is round, will the king’s
command flatten it?” he asks rhetorically. “No, I
will not sign.”
This situation is
governed by Pakistani law. Hillary Clinton’s
insistence to the contrary, backed by threats, does
not change that fact any more than Henry VIII’s
command could change the shape of the earth. Qureshi
again refused to sign.
At that point,
pressure was put on Pakistan’s government, with
threats of aid cutoff.
Pakistan’s current
government was ready to cave in to Washington’s
demands. Qureshi was called to a meeting by
President Zardari. It quickly became clear that
other ministers wanted him to grant diplomatic
immunity.
In A Man for All
Seasons, Sir Thomas was reminded by a friend of all
the important people who were willing to recognize
the king’s divorce. “Why don’t you just come along
with us, for fellowship?” his friend asks. More
replies: “When we die, and you are sent to heaven
for doing your conscience, and I am sent to hell for
not doing mine, will you come with me, for
fellowship?”
It didn’t matter to
Qureshi how many other people in the government
wanted to appease Washington by giving Davis a free
pass. As far as he was concerned, this was a matter
of right and wrong. Once again, he refused to sign.
In the ensuing cabinet reshuffle, Qureshi ceased to
be foreign minister. He then found himself receiving
base slander from his own party members.
When Sir Thomas More
finds that a former friend has perjured himself in
exchange for a position in Wales, then a backwater,
he laments, “It profits a man nothing to give his
soul for the whole world but for Wales?”
Qureshi’s position is
that it would have been an absolute disgrace to
ignore his conscience and sell his country’s
sovereignty in exchange for the table scraps
Pakistan is getting under Kerry-Lugar-Berman.
That Pakistan’s
government apparently does not understand that may
be the biggest disgrace of all.
The writer is an associate at the Center for
Security and Science. He has served in the New
Hampshire legislature and as an election monitor in
Pakistan. Email:
TGHatCSS@gmail.com
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