Amnesty International Report 1996 - Pakistan

Dozens of prisoners of conscience were held. Scores of people were detained without charge or trial after security operations, particularly in Sindh Province. Torture, including rape, was widespread, reportedly leading to at least 70 deaths. Judicial punishments of flogging and amputation were imposed and fetters continued to be used. Scores of people who had allegedly "disappeared" remained unaccounted for. At least 85 people were extrajudicially executed. At least 48 people were sentenced to death, including five in absentia. Five prisoners were executed, two of them in public. Armed opposition groups committed human rights abuses, including torture and deliberate and arbitrary killings. Violent conflict between different ethnic, religious and political groups continued, particularly in Karachi, capital of Sindh Province, where at least 1,950 people were killed. The Government of Benazir Bhutto encouraged police to use "ruthlessness" in combating what it described as "terrorists". Ordinances were promulgated to enable provincial governments to use the army and the paramilitary Rangers for law and order operations and to give them police powers of arrest and interrogation during such operations. An ordinance promulgated by President Farooq Leghari in April created an exception to the rule against admissibility of confessions made in police custody for those tried under the Terrorist Affected Areas Ordinance. Bar associations and human rights groups protested as they feared this would encourage police to use ill-treatment or torture to obtain confessions. In April the cabinet approved a bill introducing procedural changes to curb the abuse of the law against blasphemy. In June it approved a bill abolishing the death penalty and the punishment of flogging for anyone below the age of 15. In October it approved a bill banning public flogging for certain offences. None of the three bills had been approved by parliament at the end of the year. The Qisas and Diyat Ordinance, which permits forms of cruel, inhuman or degrading punishment, remained in force. In July the government announced the establishment of a Ministry for Human Rights. The Human Rights Cell in the Ministry of Law reported that it had investigated 5,000 cases of human rights violations in 1994. Its spokesperson said that there were no political prisoners in the country. Several departmental and judicial inquiries into human rights violations were set up during 1995 but only one conviction was reported. Two police officers were sentenced to 14 years' imprisonment in Quetta for causing a death in custody. In August the cabinet approved the ratification of the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, with a reservation to those articles which allegedly conflict with Islamic traditions. Scores of people, many of whom were possible prisoners of conscience, were arrested during cordon and search operations by police and paramilitary Rangers in Karachi. Relatives of people wanted by the police were often held for days when those sought could not be found. Several journalists were detained for writing articles critical of the government and appeared to be prisoners of conscience. Journalist Zafaryab Ahmad was arrested on 5 June along with several members of the Bonded Labour Liberation Front of Pakistan (BLLF) and charged with sedition after writing about bonded labour and the murder of child activist Iqbal Masih in April. Zafaryab Ahmad was released on bail in August. His trial had not begun by the end of the year. At least 35 Ahmadis were charged with religious offences including blasphemy, which carries a mandatory death penalty. Bail was difficult to obtain for Ahmadi defendants, leading to prolonged pre-trial detention. At least three Ahmadis were prisoners of conscience. Nasir Ahmad from Nankana in Punjab Province was sentenced to six years' imprisonment. The court in Sheikhupura held that he had "posed as a Muslim" by using Islamic terms of blessing on a wedding invitation card and had deliberately outraged the religious feelings of Muslims. Three prisoners of conscience sentenced to death on charges of blasphemy were acquitted. Arshad Javed, a Muslim man, was arrested in 1989 after opposing protests against British writer Salman Rushdie and claiming to be Christ. Although he was certified as mentally ill, he was tried and sentenced to death in February 1993. He spent five years in jail, two of them on death row, before being acquitted in January. Salamat Masih, who was only 12 years old at the time of his alleged offence in May 1993, and Rehmat Masih, were sentenced to death for blasphemy on 9 February. On 23 February the Lahore High Court acquitted them. They left the country after Islamists protested against the acquittal and demanded their deaths. The case relating to the murder in April 1994 of Manzoor Masih, their co-accused, proceeded slowly as key witnesses received death threats (see Amnesty International Report 1995). Scores of people were detained on political grounds without charge or trial after security operations, particularly in Sindh Province. Most were held for a few days before being released. Torture, including rape, in police, military and judicial custody continued to be widespread, leading to at least 70 deaths. Javed Masih, arrested in August on a charge of theft in Hyderabad, Sindh Province, was reportedly beaten, kicked, subjected to electric shocks and had kerosene oil forced into his anus. He died three days later. Police reportedly hung his body by the neck to create the impression of suicide, but later asserted that he had died of heart failure. Although a doctor testified that Javed Masih had died of torture, and his family registered a complaint, none of the accused police officers were reported to have been arrested by the end of the year. Victims of rape in custody found it difficult to obtain redress. Razia Masih, arrested in August for robbery and held in the police superintendent's house in Shahdadpur, was raped by three police officers. Owing to police pressure, a doctor refused to issue a medical certificate to support her allegation, making it impossible for her to register a complaint of rape. Four police officers were charged with unlawfully confining and injuring her and then released on bail. Their trial had not started by the end of the year. Dozens of sentences of flogging were imposed, most often for sexual and drug offences. In July Zameen Khan was given 10 lashes in public in Karachi for possessing drugs. A medical officer monitored the flogging. Prisoners were held in leg-irons, including cross-bar fetters, often in violation of prison rules which allow the use of fetters only in specific circumstances. The Sindh government's appeal against the High Court decision of December 1993 prohibiting the use of fetters was still pending in the Supreme Court. In April the Lahore High Court ordered fetters on 28 children awaiting trial in Punjab Province to be removed, but no action was taken against prison staff for using them in violation of prison rules. Islamic courts functioning in Malakand Division since December 1994 sentenced three men in June to have their right hands and left feet amputated for robbery. They were permitted to appeal to the Federal Shariat Court; the punishments had apparently not been carried out by the end of the year. The Mohajir Qaumi Mahaz (MQM), Mohajir Qaumi Movement, claimed that hundreds of party members had "disappeared" since 1992. Rais Fatima, an MQM worker, "disappeared" in June during a train journey to Lahore; her whereabouts remained unknown for four months. Her fellow traveller, MQM parliamentarian Qamar Mansoor, was later found to be in detention in Adiala Jail in Rawalpindi, held on a charge of sedition. His lawyer failed to gain access to him. At least 85 people were reportedly extrajudicially executed but police often claimed that their deaths occurred in armed "encounters". On 10 October, four MQM activists who had been arrested weeks earlier were supposedly taken by police to identify a hiding place in Nazimabad in Karachi. According to police, the four prisoners, who were fettered and handcuffed, were shot dead in an ambush by armed militants, but no police were injured. The non-governmental Human Rights Commission of Pakistan investigated the incident and contradicted the official version. It declared that the killings were "part of what appears to be the law enforcement agencies' on-going practice of eliminating those they consider hardened criminals or terrorists". An official inquiry had not published any findings by the end of the year. Other people were killed when police deliberately failed to protect them. In April, two members of the Ahmadiyya community were attacked on court premises in Shab Qadar, North West Frontier Province, where they intended to post bail for an imprisoned Ahmadi. Riaz Ahmad was stoned to death and dragged through the streets by an angry crowd; his uncle was seriously injured. Throughout the attack, police stood by passively. A complaint was lodged, but police apparently did not begin investigations. At least 48 people were sentenced to death, mostly for murder, five of them in absentia. Five prisoners were executed. Despite a government decision in February 1994 to end public executions, Mushtaq Arain and Mohammad Juman were executed in July in Karachi and Hyderabad Jails respectively in front of hundreds of prisoners who were forced to watch. Eid Wali, imprisoned on death row in Muzaffarabad District Jail, Azad Kashmir, since 1969, had his death sentence commuted in March. He had repeatedly been told that his execution was imminent. A judge in Swabi, North West Frontier Province, in May directed that Jahangir, convicted of murder, should be executed by the heirs of the victim as qisas (punishment equal to the offence). The father of the murdered woman teacher was to shoot him dead in the school playground where the crime had been committed. The execution was stayed pending a decision of the Peshawar High Court on the question of whether or not public executions were compatible with human dignity. Dozens of people were allegedly tortured or deliberately and arbitrarily killed by armed groups on account of their ethnic or religious identity. The victims included relatives of police officers and people suspected of being police informers. In addition, dozens of bodies were found in Karachi, often blindfolded, tied up and with torture marks, apparently killed solely to spread fear in the city. In January Amnesty International published a report, Pakistan: The Pattern persists – Torture, deaths in custody, "disappearances" and extrajudicial executions under the PPP government, which said that the government of the Pakistan People's Party (PPP) had not done enough in its first 15 months in office to safeguard human rights. Amnesty International also called for the death sentences on prisoners of conscience Salamat Masih and Rehmat Masih to be set aside and for them to be released, and for everyone involved in their case to be adequately protected. In March Amnesty International issued a report, Pakistan: The death penalty for juveniles, urging abolition of the death penalty for children, in accordance with Pakistan's obligations under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which it ratified in 1990. Following the murder of child activist Iqbal Masih in Muridke in April, Amnesty International called for an independent investigation into his death. In May Amnesty International published Pakistan: "Keep your fetters bright and polished": The continued use of bar fetters and cross fetters, urging the authorities to review legislation governing the use of fetters and to stop their unlawful use. In the same month it published Pakistan: Executions under the Qisas and Diyat Ordinance, expressing concern about particularly inhuman and degrading forms of punishment. Amnesty International in March, May and August called on armed opposition groups to observe minimum humanitarian standards, while noting that the difficulties of dealing with such groups may never serve as an excuse for the government to commit human rights violations. The government denied in several letters to Amnesty International in August and September that law enforcement personnel were responsible for human rights violations. The government said that several of those killed in alleged "encounters" were criminals responsible for "terrorist acts". In its November report, Pakistan: Appeal to ban public flogging, Amnesty International called on all parties to end this punishment and in its December report, Women in Pakistan: Disadvantaged and denied their rights, Amnesty International urged the government to take measures to safeguard the human rights of women.