Eliminate reasons to reduce violence: researchers

Lahore: Social researchers while addressing a two-day international conference underlined factors behind violence and said that violence is present in diverse form in our society and we must eliminate reasons to reduce violent activities.

The international conference titled “Encountering Violence – Recent Research on Pakistan in Comparative Perspective” was organized by Institute of Social and Cultural Studies at its auditorium here on Thursday.

Punjab Higher Education Chairman Prof Dr Nizamuddin was the chief guest while Dean Faculty of Behavioral and Social Sciences Prof Dr Zakria Zakir, foreign researchers including Prof Dr Wilhem Hietmeyer, Dr Boris Wilike and Ms Rosario Layus from Bielefeld University Germany and presenters including Dr Raghib Hussain Naeemi, Ms Maliha Shah, Muhammad Salman, Dr Amanullah, and Prof Dr Farah Malik, faculty members and a large number of students were present on the occasion.

Addressing the ceremony, Dr Zakria Zakir highlighted impact of violence on the quality of life of individual and tranquility of social system. He said that the reasons creating and prompting violence were affecting our social and domestic life. He said that our society must eliminate space for violent behavior and institutionalize the process of reconciliation and dialogue.

Ms Maliha Shah while narrating her study conducted on women of Swat said that family values, gendered roles and expectations within marriage as well as the perception of a lack of other options make Swat’s women more tolerant of violence. She said that a difference of opinion between younger and older women can be observed: the former are less inclined to justify and tolerate violence. She said although women accept their conventional household roles, women also consider the possibility of becoming more empowered in order to reduce their vulnerability to domestic violence.

Nauman Aqil said that he set out to study one more violent and one less violent neighborhood in Lahore to try to understand how community organizations, physical characteristics and the residents’ strategies for crime prevention and control are related to different levels of criminal violence. He said that the study found spatial dynamics, population heterogeneity, and a lack of social cohesion were important predictors of criminal violence. He said it was noted that patterns of social interaction among neighbors have undergone significant change over the past few decades.

In addition, he said, local strategies of informal social control were limited to random vigilance, settlement of sporadic disputes within community settings, and surveillance of children’s activities. He concluded that indigenous means of informal social control can help prevent, or at least control, criminal violence in neighborhoods. Presenting his research titled “Justifications and Legitimacy of Police violence: How is Police Violence Legitimized in Pakistan?”,  Kamran Adil said that people come into contact with the criminal justice system in Pakistan largely through the police, and therefore, much of the outcome of the system is dependent on the interaction among the different components of the system.

He said that the police functions that are assigned by the law can broadly be divided into riot control and investigation of criminal cases categories. He said that whereas the use of force for riot control is sanctioned by the law – with some limitations, it is totally prohibited for the purposes of investigation. He concluded that through interviews with judges, prosecutors, defense attorneys and police officers, the research showed that with various forms of violence, interactions between the various parties involved in the criminal justice system of Pakistan legitimize the use of force.

The technical sessions of the conference will continue today.