The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan has recommended reinstating moratorium on death penalty with an aim of abolition, as the country remained one of the highest executioners in the world in 2016.HRCP in a report ‘State of Human Rights in 2016’ said that while the pace of execution in Pakistan slowed significantly in 2016, the country remained one of the highest executioners in the world with 87 persons executed in 2016, most in the first six months of the year. According to the report, 426 persons were awarded death penalty in 2016 while 496 in 2015. The report further said that the trials were often characterised by the lack of access to impartial legal counsel. The fate of the accused was sealed in the initial stages when they were given a state-appointed lawyer who was often poorly-trained and lacked competence, the report lamented. According to the report, Punjab witnessed an increase in the cases of rape, gang-rape and abduction. Bank robberies, theft and snatching of motorcycles and mobile phones witnessed a sudden rise in 2016 in Karachi. Three human rights defenders were killed. Punjab police said that they killed 340 criminals in at least 291 ‘encounters.’ Sindh police said 248 robbers and other criminals, 96 terrorists and 11 kidnappers were killed in encounters. Law enforcers claimed to have killed at least 229 suspected terrorists and kidnappers in different raids in Balochistan, 315 in Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata), 40 in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and four in Gilgit-Baltistan. On the issue of military courts, the report said that 275 cases were referred to the military courts which convicted 274 of them. The fate of one remains unknown. The military courts awarded the death sentence to 161 prisoners while 113 were imprisoned. On enforced disappearances, it said that another 728 Pakistanis were added to the list of missing persons in 2016, the highest in at least six years, taking the toll to 1,219, according to the Commission of Inquiry on Enforced Disappearances.
On the issue of ‘Female Prisoners and Juveniles,’ the commission quoted a report by the Ministry of Interior published in October, which stated that of the 939 women incarcerated in jails in Punjab at the time, 110 were accompanied by their children. Out of these 110 women, 60 were under-trial, 45 had been sentenced while five were facing the death penalty. HRCP recommended that efforts should be made for maintenance and protection of children of incarcerated mothers outside the prison once they are of school-going age. The report said that torture remained the foremost instrument of evidence collection in the criminal justice system of the country. It further stated that around 14,628 Pakistani migrant workers were incarcerated abroad between 2005 and 2015. The watchdog welcomed the enactment of new laws to protect women but decried an uptick in religiously motivated vigilantism. The report shows that human rights situation is deteriorating. Much of the blame for the present situation must be placed on the government. Then there is the little regard it gives to institutions like parliament, where issues of governance and problems of the people must be debated. The opposition cannot escape blame either. The government should seriously consider the findings of the report and should take corrective measure to fully ensure the protection of basic rights of the people of the country.
