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.
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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.
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.
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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.
Related: "The heart-piercing cry makes even the executioners wince.
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.”
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According to Ahmed, the country’s system of rewards and penalties has failed. “Rape offenders should be severely punished. There is no doubt that a rapist deserves no pardons,” he said.
The senator concluded by promising to “make every effort to have my motion approved as a bill during the current Senate session.”
Meanwhile, Senator Waleed Iqbal, the chairperson of the Senate Standing Committee on Human Rights, told The Media Line that following the bill’s approval in September 2023, he received a deluge of written and spoken correspondence about it.
Referring to a famous rape case in Pakistan that ended with the guilty party eventually being hanged, Iqbal claimed that “rape cases increased by 33% after the execution of the convict in the Zainab rape case.”
In January 2018, a seven-year-old girl named Zainab was raped and murdered in the district of Kasur, Punjab province. Her body was discovered in a garbage bin with bruises, and the autopsy verified death by strangulation following rape. This incident shocked the world and evoked a strong outcry in Pakistan and elsewhere, calling for the culprits to face harsh punishment.
The Pakistani government’s efforts to solve the case were initially lax until violent riots broke out across the country, including in the city of Kasur. Then, the agencies swung into action to arrest the accused.
On January 23, the police arrested Imran Ali, a neighbor of Zainab, as his DNA matched the DNA samples collected from her body and at least seven other victims. During his interrogation, Ali confessed that he had raped and murdered 12 other minors.
After a seven-month trial, Ali was sentenced to death by the court and hanged on the gallows on jail premises.
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