DEATH PENALTY-PAKISTAN: Reason For Hope on World Day

By Zofeen Ebrahim Reprint | | Print |

Zofeen Ebrahim

KARACHI, Oct 9 2008 (IPS) - As rights groups mark the Sixth World Day Against the Death Penalty with an appeal for an end to executions in Asia, Pakistan pulled one man back from the gallows and hinted that it will soon honour pledges to commute the sentences of over 7,000 death row inmates.

Zulfiquar Ali, 38, was due to be executed on Oct. 8. But on Wednesday, President Asif Ali Zardari granted him a two-week reprieve.

The news was confirmed to the Ali family, including his two daughters, aged ten and 11, by a midnight telephone call from the interior minister, Rehman Malik.

“When the interior minister himself called me and gave me the news, I knew a miracle had happened,” said Abudul Qayyum, Ali’s younger brother, talking to IPS from Lahore.

The minister told him he should begin negotiations immediately with the families of the two people who his brother was convicted of killing.

Under Islamic law, the families can pardon Ali and receive “Diyat” money in compensation.

Although Ali has only 14 days in which to reach an agreement with the families, the minister also referred to the government’s plans to commute the death sentences of most of the over 7,000 on Pakistan’s death row.

“Malik told me that the government is working on this issue and I should soon hear some good news.”

On Oct. 4, the newspaper Dawn reported that the government was “finalising” its plans to commute these sentences.

“The law ministry is doing a thorough research on the subject to come up with a final draft and fulfil the government’s promise to commuting death sentences into life term(s),” sources told the paper.

As a tribute to Benazir Bhutto on her birthday on Jun. 21, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani announced the commutation, one of the largest in modern times. Bhutto was assassinated during an attack on a Pakistan People’s Party rally last December.

Her widower, Zardari, was sworn in as Pakistan’s president on Sep. 9 after Pervez Musharraf was forced to resign.

“Since the prime minister announced his decision in June, 15 people have been executed; and since the beginning of the year, a total of 35 people have been hanged,” said I.A. Rehman, chairperson of the independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP).

Human rights activists and NGOs are predicting stiff opposition to the government’s plans to push through the commutation.

“I think the government has made up its mind that it wants to do away with the death penalty but there are people like the very orthodox law minister, Farooq Naek, who are scared of taking bold decisions,” said Syed Iqbal Haider, a former senator, former federal law minister (1993) and one time the attorney general of Pakistan, who is vehemently against the death penalty.

“The decision is a correct stand. The government needs to be resolute and not budge under any pressure,” he added.

Rehman has called the commutation plans an “explosive issue” about which Islamic groups would “kick up quite a row”.

Fierce opposition has already been expressed by the religious party Jamiat-Ulema-Islam headed by Maulana Fazlur Rehman who is opposed to the power vested upon the president to grant reprieves.

Opposition has also come from Pakistan’s Chief Justice, Abdul Hameed Dogar, appointed by President Musharraf in November 2007.

After the commutation announcement by the prime minister, the Supreme Court asked the attorney general and the ministries of interior and law to submit written statements explaining the government’s position on death row prisoners.

“What comes to mind is that Musharraf may have instigated it with a view to bringing the government under pressure,” said Rehman. He might also have wanted to see hanged the people who had tried to assassinate him.

Another reason for the Chief Justice’s opposition might also be that he shared the view of the vast majority of Pakistanis who believed that the death penalty was a Quranic injunction and should never be abolished.

“That is why we have been calling for a moratorium on executions and reduction in the number of capital offences. We do foresee additional difficulties but we hope the controversy should lead to healthy conclusions,” said Rehman.

At the time of independence, in 1947, only murder and treason carried the death sentence. But today there are 27 capital crimes, including blasphemy, stripping a woman of her clothes in public and sabotage of the railway system. Many of these were introduced during the 1977-88 military dictatorship of Gen.l Zia-ul-Haq.

The Asian Human Rights Commission has hailed the eleventh hour stay of execution for Ali.

It also welcomed the president’s order that 475 prisoners at Adiala prison in Rawalpindi should be moved from death row cells to open barracks with ordinary inmates.