EDITORIAL: Pakistan may not have a shining track record on human rights but is trying hard to make it better on such emotive issues as enforced disappearances, minorities’ rights, and blasphemy. This was credibly demonstrated by Pakistan’s delegation at the recent periodic review session of UN Human Rights Council’s (UNHRC’s) Working Group. The delegation leader, Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Hina Rabbani Khar, spoke at length about the rights of minorities, their role in society as well as issues related to women, reiterating Pakistan’s commitment to the UNHRC’s mission of promoting and protecting human rights. She also told the meeting that her country regularly reports to the relevant treaty bodies about the implementation status of the international human rights conventions, to which it is a state party.
The delegation’s other members addressed various points raised by the meeting participants. Responding to concerns regarding the ‘missing’ persons, Interior Secretary said the government was diligently dealing with cases of involuntary or forced disappearances. That may have raised many eyebrows back home, but the fact is that in June 2021 the government introduced a bill in the National Assembly that criminalised the heinous offence recommending a 10-year imprisonment for anyone found guilty. It was passed in November of that year.
Last year, the nation’s highest legislative forum took it up again, and amended it to remove a clause that carried five-year prison punishment for the complaints if they failed to provide any supporting evidence. The courts, especially the Islamabad High Court, have been hearing petitions filed by relatives of the missing and demanding answers from the government and related agencies. These efforts are yet to succeed, though they have helped in some cases. For his part, Secretary for Religious Affairs and Religious Harmony offered the meeting the explanation that the government was mindful of its responsibility to stop misuse of the blasphemy laws and was trying to tackle the issue. However, it has yet to take any step in that direction, fearing a backlash from religious groups and parties.
For the Working Group’s members Pakistan’s defence of the state of human right was satisfactory enough as in their brief comments representatives of as many 122 countries appreciated its endeavours to further improve human rights. Predictably, nonetheless, the Indian delegate objected to what he described as “drastic deterioration of human rights situation in Pakistan.” Only an unashamed serial abuser of human rights like India could level such an accusation against this country.
In his answer, Pakistan’s Permanent Representative to the UNHRC drew the delegates’ attention to the rights crisis created by the New Delhi government in the Illegally Indian Occupied Jammu and Kashmir and its backing of terrorist activities inside this country. It is also worth mentioning that during the recent years, in its annual reports, the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, a federal government body, has repeatedly been recommending that the State Department designate India as a “country of particular concern” for engaging in or tolerating systematic, ongoing and egregious religious freedom violations, as set forth by the International Religious Freedom Act. It is another matter though that Washington prefers to look the other way due to its strategic interests.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2023