HRCP takes stock of national, human rights situation
BY PR
LAHORE, March 23: The Annual General Meeting of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) held at Lahore on Tuesday discussed in detail the national situation and major human rights concerns. It also issued the following statement:
CALL FOR TRANSPARENCY: HRCP is mindful of the fact that the primary responsibility of any government is to protect the lives of its citizens against all militant forces and terrorists.
However, any action against such forces must be carried out within the ambit of humanitarian international law. The failure to take parliament and the people into confidence about the ongoing military operation in Wana is adding to growing concerns about the casualties, military and civilian, suffered in the fighting and the hardships, including threats to life, caused to local residents.
A full disclosure of the facts about the deaths in Wana, operations that have left an estimated 30,000 people homeless and details of those arrested must be made public. This is especially necessary given local claims that innocent civilians are being rounded up, rather than foreign militants.
The lack of transparency concerning the massive operation and the refusal to permit journalists to visit the area also means that threats by military leaders against entire villages become all the more ominous.
The AGM demands that the people of the country be provided with the full facts, and that a public debate, within parliament and at other forums be permitted on the issue.
The AGM also warns that this is essential if any national consensus against militancy is to be successfully built and the growing militant tendencies that have already taken such a huge toll on the lives of innocent citizens brought to a halt.
INDO-PAKISTAN PEACE: The AGM welcomes the ongoing peace process between Pakistan and India, and hopes that the contacts at all levels between the peoples of the two countries will be expanded further.
This is essential to the welfare and economic betterment of the people of both India and Pakistan. The AGM also reiterates its position that disputes between nations can only be settled through a process of discussion and negotiation.
DEATH PENALTY: The immense suffering of the 6,593 people in the country awaiting execution in death cells at jails across the country requires the most urgent attention. This population has been growing from year to year.
Today, in the Punjab, approximately every third convict is facing death by hanging. The AGM demands action without further delay to alleviate the misery of such prisoners, a significant number of whom have remained in death cells for over a decade, denied even the limited rights available to other prisoners. The current rate of execution, with 18 people hanged during 2003, indicates the death row population will continue to grow.
The AGM reiterates its call for a repeal of the death penalty, and all inhumane laws that fail to respect the dignity of human life. Till this step is taken, the AGM demands that the condition of prisoners awaiting death be urgently reviewed and remedial measures taken without further delay, by freeing those who have already served the equivalent of a life term or those who are mentally or physically ill, elderly or disabled and converting other sentences to prison terms to ease the rapidly worsening situation in death cells.
KILLING OF SHEIKH YASSIN: The extra-judicial killing of Sheikh Yassin, leader of Hamas by Israeli forces, is a cause of concern. Targeted killings, even in the garb of anti-terrorism, are unacceptable.
It is also deplorable that the government of Pakistan avoided categorically condemning this killing. This HRCP AGM does not support or agree with any individual associated with promoting militancy, but at the same time denounces governments who use brute force like target killings and promote the concept of rough and easy justice. Such trends could lead to international anarchy.
POLITICAL PROCESS: All political parties in the country must be permitted to work under their chosen leaders, and must be allowed a participation in the political process without harassment or attempts to interfere in their internal working. No detention must be allowed on the basis of political expediency, and all political prisoners held for such reasons must be released immediately.
ILLEGAL ARRESTS: The increase in the number of illegal arrests and denial of due process to the detainees is a matter of grave concern to human rights activists.
People are picked up by police and intelligence agencies and their families are neither told of the charges against them nor are they allowed access to their counsel. The practice of indiscriminately linking the victims with terrorists deprives them of public sympathy and reduces the possibility of redress by courts.
This AGM demands that the unacceptable practice of arbitrary arrests must stop forthwith. The demands of law must be fully complied with and no person should be denied his/her rights to due to process.
NEED FOR JOBS: It is quite obvious that the rising unemployment in the country has assumed the form of a national crisis. Several reports from official quarters have openly challenged government claims that joblessness is under control and poverty is being checked.
The statistics released by independent groups as well as semi-autonomous government bodies state that nearly 40 per cent of people in the country today live below the poverty line.
Others fall in and out of this gaping poverty trap. The reports of hundreds of suicides as a direct result of unemployment, and the still more chilling accounts of parents who have taken the lives of their children to spare them from starvation indicate the undescribable agony caused by joblessness and poverty. The failures at the policy level, leading to crisis such as recent shortages of atta, only aggravate the miseries of ordinary people.
The AGM calls on the government to immediately stop all downsizing in the public sector, that has contributed greatly to the unemployment problem and rather than attempting to disguise or diffuse the truth.
