LAHORE: The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) has written a letter to the United Nations (UN) highlighting human rights violations, including custodial torture, abductions of PTI workers and assault on their homes by the incumbent government.
In a letter to Dr Alice Jill Edwards, Special Rapporteur on Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, PTI senior leader Shireen Mazari said that over the last 11 months, they had witnessed a massive upsurge in custodial torture and other human rights violations relating especially to abductions, assault on homes and the frequent use of teargas, chemicalised water in water cannons and rubber bullets, all against unarmed men, women and even children exercising their right to freedom of expression and peaceful protest.
“The brunt of these cruel and degrading treatments alongside custodial torture has been carried out by the state of Pakistan through provincial and federal police forces plus other law enforcement agencies (LEAs) against the leadership and workers of the largest political party in Pakistan led by former prime minister Imran Khan.
The most recent examples have been the abductions and custodial torture, police and Ranger’s actions against the PTI leadership and workers in Lahore, Islamabad and Karachi primarily but spread across Pakistan,” she said.
She continued that in Lahore, Khan’s residence was the target of days of attacks to remove workers who had come to support and defend their leader against possible assassination plots given that one such failed plot had already taken place in November 2022. “From March 8 right up to March 18, the police and the Rangers had turned the Zaman Park area into a battlefield, killing one unarmed worker after taking him into custody; the postmortem report widely shared on social media, showed torture that led to his death in custody before his body was dumped on the street,” she added.
According to her, on March 18, going against a Lahore High Court order, a heavily armed contingent of Punjab police and Rangers broke the gates of Khan’s house and entered his home to ransack it while Khan was on his way to Islamabad to present himself before a court and his wife, non-political person, was alone at home at the time.
Simultaneously in Islamabad, Khan and his supporters were confronted with a massive display of armed police and Rangers who had laid a death trap for him by trying to create a scene of chaotic fighting and claim his life as an ‘accident’ in the melee.
However, Khan had much earlier instructed all his workers not to fall prey to the LEA’s instigations to a violent confrontation. Unfortunately, the Islamabad police then resorted to abducting (their) workers and leadership and inflicting torture on them before formally ‘arresting’ them.
She averred that at present the police chief of the federal capital as well as the police in Lahore have declared open season on the PTI leadership and workers subjecting them and their families to illegal house raids, abductions, torture and incarceration on trumped up charges. The judicial process was archaic and often unresponsive sadly, he added.
“Pakistan was a state party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the Convention against Torture. We hope you would take note of the complete violation of both these legally binding international conventions,” she added.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2023
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