[Islamabad] Pakistan’s Senate Standing Committee on Human Rights passed a resolution on Friday against a proposal to impose the death penalty by public hanging of capital offenders and rapists in particular.
In September 2023, Senator Mushtaq Ahmed of Jamaat e Islami moved a bill in favor of public hanging. This bill had been approved during a session of the Senate Standing Committee on Interior Affairs.
However, last week, the Senate Human Rights Committee, by a majority of the members present, opposed any constitutional amendments that call for public execution for capital offenses, according to reports by the Associated Press of Pakistan APP, a state-owned news agency.
The Senate Standing Committee meeting was chaired by Senator Waleed Iqbal.
Two members of the committee, Senator Dr. Mehr Taj Roghani and Senator Dr. Humayun Momand, expressed their disagreement with the resolution by asserting that the committee has decided rapidly without accessing any proper research and information on the possible deterrent effects of public executions.
The federal secretary for the Ministry of Human Rights and the federal secretary of the National Commission for Human Rights dually briefed the Senate committee on public executions.
The briefings underscored a 1994 ruling by Pakistan's Supreme Court, which ruled that public executions violated the inviolability of human dignity as protected by the country's Constitution.
Federal Human Rights Secretary Allah Dino Khawaja told the committee, “This is a very sensitive matter, and it can have serious national and international implications. Our international donors have a strong stance regarding the death penalty and hanging publicly.”
Stating that the United Nations and the European Union emphasized the need to reduce the death penalty, he urged that “there should be no public hanging in Pakistan.”
The Media Line spoke with Senator Mushtaq Ahmed, the initiator of the public hanging motion.
Ahmed told The Media Line: “In my opinion, the Senate Human Rights Committee's resolution opposing public executions is incorrect. I believe that many who oppose it are genuinely sympathetic to the rapists. Moreover, it would be inhumane for individuals who have experienced sexual assault to remove the death sentence for rapists.”
He asserted that “for a horrible act like rape, a public hanging serves as a deterrence so that others might take a hard lesson. An unsettling fact is the sharp increase in rapes of women and minor children in Pakistan; if we don't safeguard the next generation, history won't ever be able to forgive us.”
According to Ahmed, the country’s system of rewards and penalties has failed
“Rape offenders should be severely punished. There is no doubt that a rapist deserves no pardons,” he said.
The senator concluded by promising to “make every effort to have my motion approved as a bill during the current Senate session.”
Meanwhile, Senator Waleed Iqbal, the chairperson of the Senate Standing Committee on Human Rights, told The Media Line that following the bill's approval in September 2023, he received a deluge of written and spoken correspondence about it.
Referring to a famous rape case in Pakistan that ended with the guilty party eventually being hanged, Iqbal claimed that “rape cases increased by 33% after the execution of the convict in the Zainab rape case.”
In January 2018, a seven-year-old girl named Zainab was raped and murdered in the district of Kasur, Punjab province. Her body was discovered in a garbage bin with bruises, and the autopsy verified death by strangulation following rape. This incident shocked the world and evoked a strong outcry in Pakistan and elsewhere, calling for the culprits to face harsh punishment.
The Pakistani government’s efforts to solve the case were initially lax until violent riots broke out across the country, including in the city of Kasur. Then, the agencies swung into action to arrest the accused.
On January 23, the police arrested Imran Ali, a neighbor of Zainab, as his DNA matched the DNA samples collected from her body and at least seven other victims. During his interrogation, Ali confessed that he had raped and murdered 12 other minors.
After a seven-month trial, Ali was sentenced to death by the court and hanged on the gallows on jail premises.
Then, in 2020, another violent rape case again brought attention to the prevalence of sexual assault in Pakistan and the criminal justice system’s inability to prevent it. A two-person gang raped a Pakistan-born French national in front of her kids when she ran out of fuel while traveling on the motorway near Lahore city.
The incident made global headlines, and the country’s former premier, Imran Khan, was called upon to allow the chemical castration of those involved in violent sexual assaults.
The event sparked a discussion on social media and in mainstream media about the startling surge in sexual assault cases in the country. Additionally, the law enforcement system was criticized for its incapacity to protect citizens.
The police arrested two people involved in the crime who were sentenced to death by a Lahore court.
Over the years, Pakistan has witnessed cases of sexual and gender-based violence and assault against women and children, which have infuriated the public and heightened calls for death penalties for those who commit these crimes.
During Imran Khan's administration, in February 2020, the Pakistani National Assembly approved a resolution, introduced by Ali Muhammad Khan, the then-Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs, calling for the public hanging of rapists.
Notwithstanding the National Assembly's approval of the public hanging measure, some ministers—including the major opposition Pakistan People's Party—opposed it.
In September 2023, War Against Rape (WAR), a Karachi-based registered advocacy organization working for the rights of sexual violence survivors (women and minors), published bombshell research highlighting an alarming spike in incidents of gender-based violence. According to WAR analysis, 21,900 women were raped in the Punjab province alone between 2017 and 2021.
This alarming figure equates to one assault on a woman every two hours, or an average of 12 women raped per day.
According to Riffat Ayesha, a Rawalpindi-based Women's Rights activist, “the data collected by various organizations is far less than the actual number of rape victims.”
She told The Media Line that “because of the numerous so-called obstacles, namely peer pressure, fear of retaliation from the community, and institutionalized prejudices in the legal system, these numbers are merely the beginning.”
Ayesha added that “access to information law exists in Pakistan, but if a request is made to obtain information, it is often evasive. And when it comes to sexual harassment, getting information becomes even more difficult.”
“Sexual insecurity affects women in practically every community across the globe,” said Ayesha, “but although women in the West speak out against sexual harassment, many Pakistani women are too afraid of being stigmatized to even consider talking to anybody about their agony,” she concluded.
Saeedain Khan, a lawyer at the Federal Sharia Court in Islamabad and a senior member of Lahore High Court Rawalpindi Bench, told The Media Line: “Islamic Sharia principles often emphasize the concept of some precise parameters, which refers to fixed punishments for explicit crimes. While interpretations of these principles may vary, the severity of rape aligns with the gravity of offenses for which corporal or capital punishment may be recommended,” he added.
Khan further said that “public hanging, in this context, can be argued to serve as a visible deterrent, not only in deterring potential offenders but also in upholding the principles of justice as outlined in Sharia.”
“The spectacle of a public execution acts as a potent symbol of justice and retribution, fostering a collective consciousness that discourages individuals from engaging in acts of sexual violence,” he concluded.