Politics behind 465 executions since 2015 in Pakistan
Justice Project Pakistan releases data for the period since the government lifted the moratorium on the death penalty. With 83 per cent, Punjab has the highest number of hangings. Crime has not declined since the death penalty was reintroduced. Death sentences are carried out "to make room" in overcrowded prisons.
Islamabad (AsiaNews) - Since December 2014, when the Pakistani government lifted the moratorium on the death penalty, 465 people (more than three per week) have been hanged, this according to a data analysis by the Justice Project Pakistan (JPP), a non-government organisation working for prisoners’ rights. This puts Pakistan in fifth spot for death sentences after China, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Iraq.
The most alarming aspect is that the death penalty, officially reintroduced to reduce crimes - especially those linked to terrorism, is mostly used as a "political tool", sometimes to clear overcrowded jails, said JPP Executive Director Sarah Belal.
In 2014, the authorities reintroduced capital punishment for crimes related to terrorism following the massacre at the Peshawar's military school carried out by a group affiliated with the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) that left more than 150 people dead (mostly children). A few months later, the noose was reintroduced for all other crimes as well.
With 382 executions, or 83 per cent of the total, Punjab tops other provinces. Between 2015 and 2016 the murder rate dropped by 9.7 per cent. By comparison, 18 people were executed in Sindh Province, but the murder rate dropped by 25 per cent.
The analysis shows that the number of murders was already declining before the moratorium was lifted. Which is why activists stress that there is no direct correlation between the death penalty and lower crime or terrorism, as evidenced by the many attacks perpetrated recently.
The JPP’s doubts are reflected in the research data, which shows that only 16 per cent of the executions were imposed by Anti-Terrorism Courts, whilst most death sentences were handed down by district or sessions courts, which have no jurisdiction in terrorism cases.
What is more, in just one year after the moratorium was lifted, execution warrants have also been issued for the mentally ill, physically disabled and juvenile offenders.
Saroop Ijaz, a lawyer employed by Human Rights Watch in Pakistan, writes in the Dawn Daily that all those who were sent to the scaffold "were poor and marginalised, the ideal fodder for the fragile masculinity of the leaders desperate to prove ‘toughness’.”
Indeed, “there are no rich on death row,” he notes. On the other hand, 25 of the 27 prisons in the province are significantly overcrowded.
“The Punjab government is not fighting terrorism or crime,” Ijaz writes, “it is fighting its own demons and insecurities and at the practical level, its own people. [. . .] Killing apparently is a method of making room. This is what human life has come to in a brutalised, wounded society presided over by an opportunistic and violent government.”
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