PBC rejects NA’s public hanging resolution

Says Friday resolution violates SC orders and international conventions


Hasnaat Malik February 09, 2020
PHOTO: REUTERS

ISLAMABAD: The apex regularity body of lawyers – the Pakistan Bar Council (PBC) – has rejected the National Assembly’s resolution calling for public hanging of people found guilty of sexual assault and murder of a child.

The lower house of the parliament passed the non-binding resolution on Friday, drawing a quick backlash from at least two federal ministers as well as the opposition PPP.

A majority of lawmakers approved the resolution; however, Minister for Human Rights Shireen Mazari later tweeted that the resolution was not sponsored by the government.

The resolution "on public hangings was across party lines and not a govt-sponsored resolution but an individual act. Many of us oppose it - our MOHR (human rights ministry) opposes this," Mazari wrote on the micro-blogging site.

Reacting to the move, the PBC Vice Chairman Abid Saqi on Saturday issued a statement, saying the resolution was against dignity of human beings as well as in violation of Article 14 of Constitution.

“It is ironic that the resolution having no legal status being violative of verdicts of the superior courts of the country against public hanging has been passed despite opposition of the members of the National Assembly belonging to the treasury as well as opposition benches,” it said.

Saqi also referred to the apex court’s 1994 verdict which said public hangings of even the worst of criminals violates the rights of human dignity as enshrined in Article 14 as well as right to the protection from torture articulated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Islam, a charter produced by leading Muslim scholars in London in April 1980.

Article 7 of the charter declares that a state is not permitted to torture a criminal especially a suspect. “God will inflict punishment on those who have inflicted torture in this world.”

The statement said in this age of social advancement, when the death sentence even in general criminal cases has been abolished in many of the countries of the world, any attempt to legalize the public hearing of the people accused of a criminal act of any magnitude cannot be justified and supported.

The PBC vice chairman called on the National Assembly to immediate withdraw the “controversial resolution” to safeguard the human dignity “otherwise the legal community will start a mass movement against it beside challenging the same in the court of law.

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