Pakistan’s Senate Human Rights Committee Votes Against Public Hanging for Rapists

This resolution turns the tide in the country by igniting a new chapter in the dialogue on justice and crime prevention

[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.”

Source: The Media Lane