.
Late last year, in response to a Taliban attack in the Army Public school in Peshawar that left over 140 children dead, Pakistan lifted the moratorium on the death penalty "in terrorism-related cases." At the time it seemed like temporary and ultimately vindictive measure—but in a few short months it has evolved into something much worse.
In March this year, President Nawaz Sharif reinstated the death penalty for non-terrorism cases. This has opened the floodgates for executions of over 8,000 prisoners currently on death row, the largest number in the world.
The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan has estimated that an astonishing 135 prisoners have been executed in a mere five-month period, more than in any other year this decade.
A harsh light was shed upon Pakistan's death-penalty system last week at the United Nations, where three UN human rights experts urged Pakistan to halt the execution of a man convicted of a crime committed as a child.
Shafqat Hussain was sentenced in 2004 for kidnapping and killing a 7-year-old boy, and at the time was allegedly only 14 or 15 years old. According to his lawyers, however, Hussein’s confession was obtained after being tortured for at least nine days while in police custody. Fatima Bhutto, a grand-daughter of the late Prime Minister, Benazir Bhutto, said, “The boy was held in solitary confinement, his genitals electrocuted and he was burnt with cigarette butts."
After years of languishing on death row, Hussein was suddenly scheduled to be executed on March 19. Following an influx of international pressure and news reports, his execution was halted just hours before he was to be hanged at Karachi’s Central Jail, so that authorities could conduct an inquiry into his age at the time of the crime and on the torture allegations.
Now, a month later, the government maintains that Hussain was 23 at the time of his arrest, citing The Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) report that determined he was an adult from the arrest records. According to the UN, "the legitimacy of the inquiry was contested as claims emerged that the agency was not the appropriate body to conduct the inquiry and by reports of intimidation of witnesses and confiscation of evidence during the inquiry."
But despite these protests, for the fourth time, a death warrant was placed on Hussain’s head for June 9.
In a press release issued from Geneva last week, UN experts condemned the execution and called for the reinstatement of Pakistan's moratorium on the death penalty.
“To proceed with Mr. Hussain’s execution without proper investigation into the allegation that his confession was coerced under torture, and in spite of evidence that he was a child at the time of his alleged offence and of his possible innocence would be utterly unacceptable and in flagrant contravention of Pakistan’s national and international obligations,” the UN experts warned.
Pakistan has a convoluted history with the death penalty and minors, being one of only eight countries in the world since 1990 to have executed prisoners who were under 18 years of age at the time of committing a crime. In 2000, the Juvenile Justice System Ordinance was enacted, protecting the rights of children involved in criminal litigation and raising the minimum age of the death penalty to 18. Moreover, Pakistan ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1990, which explicitly prevents capital punishment in Article 37.1.
However, the UN has noted that despite these laws, juveniles continue to be sentenced to death. Hussain's upcoming execution is just one out of a number of alarming cases in Pakistan's fractured judicial system.
The former death penalty moratorium was a product of the left-leaning Pakistan People’s Party government, and one of the first acts of President Mr. Asif Ali Zardari in September 2008. When that moratorium was ended in the wake of the Peshawar attacks, home minister for Punjab Shuja Khanzada told The Associated Press. "Today's executions of terrorists will boost the morale of the nation."
These executions in Pakistan have become nothing more than a political tool for the government to pander to populism, rather than administer justice. The government passed the 21st Amendment to the Constitution this January to permit military courts to prosecute civilian terrorism suspects. Sharif has extolled the speed of these military courts to execute within "10-15" days of sentencing.
It's a dark time for Pakistan, and the current death-penalty policy harkens back to medieval notions of justice. The Secretary General of the United Nations, Ban Ki Moon, has iterated in the past that the "Death penalty has no place in 21st century."
Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights, Ivan Šimonović, famously wrote "In the 21st century, the right to take someone’s life is not a part of the social contract between citizens and a State anymore."
The views presented in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent the views of any other organization.
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UN calls for a Moratorium of Pakistan's Death-penalty Laws
June 9, 2015
Late last year, in response to a Taliban attack in the Army Public school in Peshawar that left over 140 children dead, Pakistan lifted the moratorium on the death penalty "in terrorism-related cases." At the time it seemed like temporary and ultimately vindictive measure—but in a few short months it has evolved into something much worse.
In March this year, President Nawaz Sharif reinstated the death penalty for non-terrorism cases. This has opened the floodgates for executions of over 8,000 prisoners currently on death row, the largest number in the world.
The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan has estimated that an astonishing 135 prisoners have been executed in a mere five-month period, more than in any other year this decade.
A harsh light was shed upon Pakistan's death-penalty system last week at the United Nations, where three UN human rights experts urged Pakistan to halt the execution of a man convicted of a crime committed as a child.
Shafqat Hussain was sentenced in 2004 for kidnapping and killing a 7-year-old boy, and at the time was allegedly only 14 or 15 years old. According to his lawyers, however, Hussein’s confession was obtained after being tortured for at least nine days while in police custody. Fatima Bhutto, a grand-daughter of the late Prime Minister, Benazir Bhutto, said, “The boy was held in solitary confinement, his genitals electrocuted and he was burnt with cigarette butts."
After years of languishing on death row, Hussein was suddenly scheduled to be executed on March 19. Following an influx of international pressure and news reports, his execution was halted just hours before he was to be hanged at Karachi’s Central Jail, so that authorities could conduct an inquiry into his age at the time of the crime and on the torture allegations.
Now, a month later, the government maintains that Hussain was 23 at the time of his arrest, citing The Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) report that determined he was an adult from the arrest records. According to the UN, "the legitimacy of the inquiry was contested as claims emerged that the agency was not the appropriate body to conduct the inquiry and by reports of intimidation of witnesses and confiscation of evidence during the inquiry."
But despite these protests, for the fourth time, a death warrant was placed on Hussain’s head for June 9.
In a press release issued from Geneva last week, UN experts condemned the execution and called for the reinstatement of Pakistan's moratorium on the death penalty.
“To proceed with Mr. Hussain’s execution without proper investigation into the allegation that his confession was coerced under torture, and in spite of evidence that he was a child at the time of his alleged offence and of his possible innocence would be utterly unacceptable and in flagrant contravention of Pakistan’s national and international obligations,” the UN experts warned.
Pakistan has a convoluted history with the death penalty and minors, being one of only eight countries in the world since 1990 to have executed prisoners who were under 18 years of age at the time of committing a crime. In 2000, the Juvenile Justice System Ordinance was enacted, protecting the rights of children involved in criminal litigation and raising the minimum age of the death penalty to 18. Moreover, Pakistan ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1990, which explicitly prevents capital punishment in Article 37.1.
However, the UN has noted that despite these laws, juveniles continue to be sentenced to death. Hussain's upcoming execution is just one out of a number of alarming cases in Pakistan's fractured judicial system.
The former death penalty moratorium was a product of the left-leaning Pakistan People’s Party government, and one of the first acts of President Mr. Asif Ali Zardari in September 2008. When that moratorium was ended in the wake of the Peshawar attacks, home minister for Punjab Shuja Khanzada told The Associated Press. "Today's executions of terrorists will boost the morale of the nation."
These executions in Pakistan have become nothing more than a political tool for the government to pander to populism, rather than administer justice. The government passed the 21st Amendment to the Constitution this January to permit military courts to prosecute civilian terrorism suspects. Sharif has extolled the speed of these military courts to execute within "10-15" days of sentencing.
It's a dark time for Pakistan, and the current death-penalty policy harkens back to medieval notions of justice. The Secretary General of the United Nations, Ban Ki Moon, has iterated in the past that the "Death penalty has no place in 21st century."
Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights, Ivan Šimonović, famously wrote "In the 21st century, the right to take someone’s life is not a part of the social contract between citizens and a State anymore."
The views presented in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent the views of any other organization.
