Pakistan Human Rights Commission highlights decline in civic freedoms, deteriorating law and order

Time of India

01-05-2025

The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan's 2024 report reveals a decline in civic freedoms, compromised elections, and a rise in terrorist incidents, particularly in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan. State-sanctioned violence persisted, with enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings reported. Blasphemy accusations led to imprisonments and violence against minorities, while restrictions on freedom of expression and assembly intensified, highlighting challenges to dissent.
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The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) in its annual highlighted a troubling decline in civic freedoms , deteriorating law and order and marked strain on federalism, Dawn reported.The State of Human Rights in 2024' report released on Wednesday, the HRCP has noted that the elections held in February last year were compromised by allegations of electoral manipulation . The government that assumed office subsequently ceded space to undemocratic forces in the form of several hurriedly passed and flawed laws.According to the report, fatalities related to the terrorist incidents in 2024 rose to more than 2500, with Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan accounting for the majority of such attacks. At least 24 deaths were reported due to vigilante mobs, some of which were connected to allegations of blasphemy in Swat and Sargodha.In his remarks at the launch of annual report, HRCP chairperson Asad Iqbal Butt highlighted continued state-sanctioned violence in 2024, with at least 379 officially reported new cases of enforced disappearance, two extrajudicial killings of persons suspected of blasphemy and 4,864 staged police encounters in Sindh and Punjab only.Former HRCP chairperson Hina Jilsaid that enforced disappearances were not justified in any circumstances, "including war or insurgency." She further said that the human rights community continues to stress that all acts of violence should be dealt in accordance with the law, Dawn reported.She said, "No cause can justify violence or acts of terrorism. The human rights community insists that all acts of violence be dealt with in accordance with the law."More than 1200 people were imprisoned on charges of blasphemy, having been entrapped by far-right groups into sharing allegedly blasphemous content on social media sites. The Ahmadiyya community reported at least six faith-based killings and the desecration of more than 200 graves and worship sites.The continued ban on the social media platform X, arrests of journalists reporting on politically sensitive issues, repeated enforcement of Section 144 to stop public gatherings, the ban on Pashtun Tahafuz Movement and the use of disproportionate -- and on occasion, lethal -- force against assemblies in Pakistan demonstrated that it was a state not ready to accept criticism or dissent.Slamming the government's law-making in 2024 and its effect on freedom of expression , HRCP co-chair Munizae Jahangir said that public officials should not be protected from legitimate criticism by ordinary citizens. Pakistan's judicial system remained heavily burdened during 2024, with 2.4 million cases pending nationwide, Dawn reported.HRCP Secretary-General Harris Khalique said that miners, sanitation workers and polio workers faced increased safety risks, with at least 172 work-related deaths in 2024 in these sectors alone. Violence against women and children continued in 2024, with at least 405 honour killings, 1,641 domestic murders, 4,175 cases of rape, and 1,630 incidents of violence against children.The Pakistan government continued to repatriate Afghan nationals amid concerns from the international community that such deportations did not meet international standards of consent and dignity.HRCP Islamabad vice-chair Nasreen Azhar voiced concern over the 26th constitutional amendment that had resulted in executive overreach in the judiciary's affairs.