'National commission for human rights being established'

Caretaker Minister for Human Rights Ansar Burney said that National Commission for Human Rights is being established in the country to address the issues falling in the periphery of human rights in a more effective way.
He was speaking at a seminar "Terrorism and Human Rights" arranged here on Monday in connection with International Human Rights Day. He hoped that the Commission would be an independent body, having philanthropists as its members.
About the threats of terrorism, he said the perpetrators of terrorist acts and suicide attacks are certainly incarnation of evil and have no sympathy even for the young children.
"Can anyone target a bus of innocent school children? No, but these callous elements, trying to impose their rejected set of ideology upon the people, would do," he added. The minister said terrorists should face justice and nobody would be allowed to inflict harm to our children.
He said the spectre of terrorism in the country is associated with certain reasons, the basic one, Pakistan being the front line ally in the global war on terror. He stressed the need for collective efforts to fight terrorism and extremism and called upon the international community to recognise its combined responsibility.
He called upon members of the civil society, legal fraternity and journalists community to play their due role in elimination of social evils without compromising over ideals of truth. He said there should be a compact system to punish the violators of human rights.
"When a child soon after his birth has the right to be protected and similarly when a man dies it is also his inalienable right to be taken to his final place of eternal rest," he added. The minister also elaborated the pathetic conditions being faced by a large number of prisoners.
He said most recently 550 juvenile prisoners in Balochistan province were released on his directive. Their only crime was that they failed to bribe the police, he added. Burney said similarly, a number of prisoners who have been sentenced to death were languishing in the jails for the last 15 to 30 years because their cases were pending before the courts. He appealed to the Chief Justice of Pakistan to immediately seek a report on such sorry state of affairs. Secretary Ministry of Human Rights Sheikh Ghazanffar Hussain in his address renewed the pledge to broaden the horizons of commitment to fight human right abuses.