State
of Human Rights in 2012
Highlights
Laws and law-making
The most significant enactments in 2012 included the 20th
Constitutional Amendment which was related to electoral matters.
The law for the establishment of a National Commission of Human Rights
came into force but remained unimplemented.
The National Commission on the Status of Women (NCSW) became
autonomous. It sponsored four bills concerning minority rights but little
progress was made concerning their passing.
Bills on accountability, freedom of information, and one aimed at
increasing minority seats in the National and Provincial Assemblies failed to
complete the legislative process.
No domestic legislation to facilitate implementation of international
human rights instruments was possible.
22 Acts were made and eight ordinances issued.
Administration of justice
A state of confrontation between the judiciary and the executive
persisted as the Supreme Court extended the limits of judicial activism and the
government was found wanting in compliance.
Prime Minister Yousaf Raza
Gillani was convicted of contempt of court and lost his office and seat in the
National Assembly. His successor barely escaped the same fate and eventually
complied with the SC order.
242 people were awarded the death penalty in 2012.
The Asghar Khan case, regarding the manipulation of the 1990 election
by the ISI and a special cell in the presidency, was at last decided. The
Supreme Court said that any election cells in the presidency or ISI, MI shall
be abolished immediately and legal action initiated against the parties
involved in the 1990 rigging.
In the case about the law and order situation in Balochistan, the SC
said the Balochistan government had lost the constitutional authority to govern
and had to go.
The Memo case caused much sensation but remained undecided.
Law and order
350 police encounters were reported from across the country in 2012 in
which 403 suspects were killed.
48 drone attacks took place in FATA in 2012, compared to 74 in 2011.
Estimates of casualties varied between 240 and 400.
1,577 terrorist attacks took place across Pakistan in 2012, claiming
the lives of 2,050 people and causing injuries to another 3,822. More than 100
Shia Hazaras were killed in Balochistan alone.
At least 2,284 people died in
ethnic, sectarian and politically-linked violence in Karachi in 2012.
Jails, prisoners and disappearances
While HRCP received reports of 87 persons going missing across
Pakistan, 72 were either traced or released. At least 72 dead bodies were
recovered from Balochistan of individuals who had gone missing in previous
months.
In March, hundreds of attackers blew up the gates of Central Prison in
Bannu and succeeded in releasing 384 prisoners, including one who had been on
death row for trying to assassinate former president Pervez Musharraf.
There were a total of 75,444 detainees in Pakistan’s prisons against
the authorised capacity of 44,578.
There were 1,289 juvenile prisoners in jails across the country, and an
overwhelming majority of them was under trial.
59 detainees died in the custody of prison authorities in 2012, another
81 were injured and 10 incidents of alleged torture of detainees were reported.
Freedom of movement
In Moharram,
the Punjab government barred 929 clerics from entering Punjab and 439 clerics
were banned from making speeches.
After attacks on Shia pilgrims travelling through
Balochistan in 2011, it was made mandatory for the pilgrims to obtain a
no-objection certificate from the authorities before starting off on their
journey to Iran via Balochistan but killing of Shia pilgrims continued in 2012.
People’s
travel within the country was affected by shortage of gas. According to the
chairman of All Pakistan CNG Association 1,800 out of the country’s 3,395 gas
filling stations were closed down for weeks on end and the government closed
another 800 stations because of non-payment of bills.
Excessive delays were experienced in the issuance
of both normal and urgent passports owing to the breakdown of machinery used
for issuing machine-readable documents.
Freedom of thought, conscience
and religion
Violence
against and harassment of religious and ethnic minorities continued and little
effort was made to bring the perpetrators to justice.
The issue of blasphemy law reform was left
untouched. Rimsha (14), a Christian girl, charged with burning the Holy Quran
was acquitted but Ryan (17) stayed in jail, and Sherry Rehman, envoy to the US,
faced being booked for blasphemy.
583 people were killed and 853 injured in 213
incidents of sectarian-related terrorist attacks and sectarian clashes.
As many as
20 Ahmadis were killed on account of their religious identity.
In Karachi, at least six churches were attacked,
two of them within a period of 10 days in October.
In March,
the 150-year old Baba Karam Singh temple was demolished overnight by the land
mafia in Mardan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
Freedom of expression
At least 14 journalists were killed in Pakistan in
2012.
According to Press Freedom Index, Pakistan was one
of the deadliest countries for journalists for the second year running, with a
ranking of 151 out of 179 countries.
Two journalists filed a petition in the Supreme
Court, asking for formation of an accountability commission to probe the
sources of income of different channel owners, anchors and advertising agencies
and the Supreme Court called for reports.
The Fair Trial Bill of 2012 was unanimously passed
in the National Assembly.
Numerous
artists, civil society activists and citizens protested against the ban on
YouTube, labeling it a gross violation of the right to freedom of expression
and access to information.
Freedom of assembly
The trend towards violent assembly and protests
grew and was used as a pretext to curtail people’s right to assemble.
Members of the Shia Hazara community of Balochistan
repeatedly protested against recurring target killings of members of their
community.
The government of the Punjab province announced a
policy for restricting and regulating rallies, processions and demonstrations
on busy thoroughfares such as the Mall in Lahore.
Section 144
of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC) was used rather profusely by district
governments in order to restrict the fundamental rights of citizens.
Freedom of association
Restrictions on forming trade unions remained in
force in 2012. Trade union leaders also faced serious risks to their lives.
At least 356 political activists were killed in
2012 in Karachi alone on account of their party affiliation.
Political participation
The CEC stated that 84 million voters, 47 million
male and 36 million female, had been registered and the list was prepared
comprehensively after house to house visits.
The Supreme Court disqualified many lawmakers for
holding dual nationalities.
The ECP failed to uphold its promise of cancelling
voting results of constituencies where less than 10% women voted and giving
overseas Pakistanis the right to vote in the general election.
The Ahmedis were kept out of the electoral
mainstream.
Women
Pakistan stood at number 52 in the world ranking of
countries according to the percentage of women in parliament.
Women made up only 2 percent of the trade union
memberships in the country.
According to UNESCO, at least 5.1 million Pakistani
children were out of school, 63 percent of whom were girls.
As many as 913 girls and women were killed in the
name of honour in 2012. These included at least 99 minor girls.
74% of the girls married off in Charsadda and
Mardan districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in 2012 were under 16.
Children
A marginal
decline was observed in infant mortality and under five year mortality rates in
2012 but Pakistan still lagged behind other South Asian countries.
58 cases of polio, a disease that afflicts only two
other countries in the world, were reported from 28 districts of Pakistan.
Pakistan had the world’s second highest number of
out-of-school children aged five to nine years. At 2.8 percent of its gross
national product (GNP), Pakistan’s expenditure on education was the second
lowest in South Asia.
During the
first six months of 2012, 1,573 incidents of child sexual abuse were recorded.
Almost 10 million children were engaged in child
labour.
Labour
Pakistan suffered one of the worst industrial
disasters in its history when a fire in a Karachi garments factory claimed at
least 270 lives.
Thousands of workers were rendered jobless due to
increasing gas and electricity shortages which led to downsizing in both public
institutions and private companies.
Out of approximately 10,000 brick kilns in Punjab,
only 3,836 were registered.
Of the 58 million workers in Pakistan by official
reckoning, only 2.1 million were registered for social security benefits.
Although 60
percent of the population is dependant on agriculture, lack of responsible
innovation and investment in infrastructure, high input costs, failure to
impart the requisite skills to the farmers, and salinity and wate-logging,
continued to cause decline in the produce.
Education
The literacy rate in the country stood at 58
percent.
At least 121 schools were targeted by militants
opposed to education, especially girls’ education.
In the budget for 2012-13, primary education got Rs
71.6 billion and secondary education Rs 69.4 billion – too little to realize
MDGs.
22 out of every 25 primary school-age children were
expected to fail or drop out of school before the fifth grade. Around 10.9
percent of schools in Pakistan lacked proper buildings, 37.7% lacked boundary
walls, 33.9% had no drinking water facility, 36.9% lacked toilets, and 59.6%
schools had no electricity.
As many as 70 public sector universities faced
financial difficulty due to non-receipt of funds from the HEC while HEC itself
was denied the resources it needed.
Health
In the
2012-13 fiscal, the allocation of funds to the health sector further declined
to a mere 0.2 percent (Rs. 7,845 million) of GNP.
There were around 9 million drug addicts in Pakistan
and the number was on the rise. Two million of the addicts were aged between
15-25 years and the number of female addicts was around 200,000.
Pakistan
ranked sixth among the 22 high-risk tuberculosis countries. About 1.6 million
cases of malaria occurred annually. One out of every nine women in Pakistan
faced the risk of breast cancer which resulted in 40,000 deaths every year,
higher than in any other country in Asia.
Housing
Housing shortage continued to be acute and the
number of people in main cities who slept in the streets increased.
The floods destroyed 275,720 dwellings in Sindh and
parts of Balochistan while the rehabilitation of the people rendered homeless
by natural disaster or conflict since 2005 was yet to be completed.
Despite notice of their excesses being taken by the
Supreme Court, the land mafia in Karachi remained unconquered.
A woman died and many others were injured in fires
in two of Karachi’s slums.
Use of blasphemy law to get a slum cleared was the
latest tactic in the hands of land-grabbers.
Environment
National Policy on Climate Change was approved by
the cabinet
Green benches were established in high courts
across Pakistan to deliver environmental justice. However, only 15% of the
cases filed at these benches could be decided and 20% of the fines imposed by
them could be collected.
10 air pollution monitors set up in Lahore, Quetta,
Peshawar and Karachi were shut down and no subsequent efforts were made by the
government to develop a mechanism for monitoring of air quality.
World Health Organization deemed water from
Keenjhar Lake, a protected wetland under the Ramsar Convention on
Wetlands, unfit for consumption.
Over 2,500 trees were cut down for development
projects.
Refugees
Even though 83,000 Afghans were
repatriated to Afghanistan in 2012, 1.6 million registered and one million
unregistered Afghans still remained in Pakistan.
At least 800 Afghan nationals were taken into custody in 2012 under
Foreigners Act for their presence in Pakistan without valid documents.
Nothing was done to bring home a quarter of a million Pakistanis
stranded in Bangladesh since 1971.
At least 757,996 Pakistanis
(163,102 families) remained internally displaced by conflict.
The monsoon floods and drought in Tharparkar forced over a million
people from their homes.
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