HRCP recommends reducing number of crimes punishable with death

To mark the 20th World Day Against the Death Penalty, the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) and its member organisation, the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP), joined the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty by publishing a briefing note on the capital punishment in Pakistan.

The day is marked to reflect on the relationship between the use of the death penalty and torture or other cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment or punishment.

The HRCP report said Pakistan continued to be among the countries where the death penalty was used with alarming frequency. Between August 2019 and August 2022, the Pakistani judicial system convicted 657 defendants sentencing them to death. However, the number of executions fell drastically. While at least 15 executions were recorded in 2019, no executions were carried out between January 2020 and August 2022, the report read.

According to the HRCP, several factors resulted in the decrease in the number of executions. First, Pakistan’s military courts ceased to exist in March 2019 after their mandate had expired. During the four years (2015-2019) in which these courts operated, at least 56 people were executed.

Secondly, an increase in the number of Supreme Court acquittals of defendants involved in capital punishment cases could explain the drop in the number of executions. The acquittals came on grounds of unreliable witnesses, lack of evidence or inadmissible evidence, lower courts’ reliance on coerced, involuntary or retracted confessions, and failure of the prosecution to establish intention or motive.

The HRCP said Pakistan had failed to prohibit the use of torture and provide a definition of torture under the domestic law. Since 2010, at least five attempts made by successive governments to pass legislation that would prohibit all forms of torture had not been successful.

In July 2021, the Pakistani Senate passed the Torture and Custodial Death (Prevention and Punishment) Bill, which provided a comprehensive definition of torture and empowered the National Commission for Human Rights to investigate the cases of torture, but the bill had yet to be passed by the National Assembly, the report reads. The HRCP recommended that capital punishment should not be given for crimes that did not meet the threshold of the most serious crimes.

Karachi event

The HRCP Sindh chapter on Monday held a session to mark World Day against the Death Penalty, in which human rights defenders termed capital punishment as a crime against humanity. It was said that when Pakistan came into being, capital punishment was limited to only two charges but now it had been recommended for 27 crimes.

The session, which was moderated by HRCP Sindh Vice Chairperson Qazi Khizar, featured a discussion by HRCP Co-Chairperson Asad Iqbal Butt, HRCP Senior Council Member Saeed Baloch, National Trade Union Federation Secretary General Nasir Mansoor, and Labour leader Ayub Qureshi.

They said that the state was responsible for ensuring the right to life. Pakistan had a moratorium on the death penalty in place until 2015, but reinstated it in the wake of the massacre at the Army Public School Peshawar, they added.

They were of the view that Pakistan did not meet the international criteria for awarding the death penalty. The justice system, lacunas in police investigations, corruption and bribery, the use of religious card, political differences, and several other factors were involved in awarding unmerited death punishments.

It was said that there were chances of injustice in every step from registration of cases to court trials, due to which innocent people had been executed by the state in a number of cases.

The rights activists stated that police sometimes used torture during the investigations and the arrested persons preferred to die rather than tolerating inhuman violence. They mentioned that official statistics regarding capital punishment were nowhere available in Pakistan which meant that there was no check.

Sharing the data, HRCP officials revealed that 578 persons were handed down death sentences in 2019, of whom 17 people were on the death row in blasphemy cases. The following year, the courts awarded capital punishment to 177 people. In 2021, 125 persons, included three women, were sentenced to death.

In total, 1,143 prisoners were on death row in various jails of the country. The speakers also mentioned a number of cases in which the prisoners were declared innocent after the implementation of capital punishment.

The HRCP demanded that the state ban the implementation of death penalty and the accountability of investigation officers be strengthened so that they could not furnish fabricated evidence against the accused persons. The right to fair trail must be ensured, the commission said, adding that a better environment in prisons should be provided to those who have been awarded capital punishment in blasphemy cases. The state should approve the 2nd protocol of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, it said.

Meanwhile, the HRCP condemned the terrorist attack on a school bus in Swat, in which the driver was killed and a young girl injured.

In a statement, the commission said Swat's residents were right to hold the security forces responsible for failing to enforce the writ of the state. “It was callous and short-sighted to have downplayed the threat from militants, given residents' growing protests and calls for security. While the perpetrators must be brought to book promptly, the state must also stop ceding space to extremists - a lesson it has consistently failed to learn at the expense of its people,” it added.