LAHORE, Oct 10: The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) has called upon the government to end death penalty in the country and place an immediate moratorium on executions until the punishment is abolished.

In a statement issued on World Day against Death Penalty, the HRCP said: “The government should seriously consider moving towards the abolition of death penalty.” Government’s announcement in June to commute death sentence to life term has not been followed up by action, the commission says.

It said executions continued in the country amid the acknowledged and well-documented critical defects of the law, of the administration of justice, of the police investigation methods, the chronic corruption and the cultural prejudices affecting women and religious minorities.In the circumstances, the punishment allows for a high probability of miscarriage of justice, which is wholly unacceptable in any civilised society, but even more so when the punishment is irreversible, reads the statement.

The HRCP noted that contrary to the much-vaunted argument of deterrence, the systematic and generalised application of death penalty has not led to an improvement of the situation of law and order.

It is ironic that while Pakistan has one of the highest rates of conviction to capital punishment in the world—with around 7,000 convicts on death row today—yet its law and order situation is alarmingly dismal. The massive application of death penalty has not strengthened the rule of law, but its application has, much on the contrary, weakened it substantially.

At the very least, the government should also promptly restrict the number of offences carrying death sentence to the most serious crimes only, and refrain from adopting new crimes entailing capital punishment, in conformity with international human rights standards, imposition of capital punishment, if it is to be passed at all must be in the rarest cases and execution of it as a measure of last resort, demands the HRCP.

There is a serious danger of miscarriage of justice resulting in taking an innocent life if executions are carried out without serious review of the law and its practice, reads the statement.