Parties should devise HR charter: HRCP

LAHORE: The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) has called on political parties to develop a human rights charter in the face of receding democracy, pre-poll electoral manipulation and severe challenges to human rights.

On concluding its 75th council meeting, the HRCP in a statement said that the escalating levels of censorship on the media and seemingly deliberate internet outages to curtail digital assemblies appear to target a particular political party and its voter base. The notices issued by the FIA to scores of social media users for an allegedly ‘malicious campaign’ against the superior judiciary (after it upheld the ECP’s decision to deprive the PTI of its electoral symbol) underscore an increasing assault on people’s right to freedom of expression.

Rumours of restricted or no access to the internet during the elections will infringe not only on people’s right to information, but also their right to peaceful assembly, it said.

The resolution passed recently by the Senate calling for delays in the elections is worrying indication, it said.

The fact that an estimated 10 million women lack national identity cards and cannot, therefore, vote in the upcoming elections implies that the state perceives citizenship as a responsibility of the individual, not a right it is obligated to uphold.

Moreover, the continued disenfranchisement of the Ahmadiya community through the use of separate electoral lists is indefensible, it said. The HRCP also said that it believed strongly that there should be reserved seats for transgender political representatives.

It expressed dismay over the state’s “continuing and wilful neglect” of the Baloch people, which has resulted in a dangerous disconnect between the two-evident from the treatment accorded to the women-led march to Islamabad to protest against “extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances”. Indeed, the perpetrators of alleged extrajudicial killings in Turbat and Sakrand (Sindh) have yet to be held to account. Similarly, the state’s “deliberate indifference” to the concerns being raised by protestors in Gilgit-Baltistan is cause for concern, it said.

The HRCP said it was also deeply concerned to learn that participants at G M Syed’s birth anniversary rallies, including women, have FIRs registered again them on charges of treason.

The recent revelation that over 26 million children in Pakistan are out of school implies a crisis in education that the state can no longer afford to ignore, it said.

The HRCP is also seriously concerned over continued reports of forced conversions of young women from religious minorities as well as deteriorating law and order in Sindh’s katcha areas, the statement said.

There are worrying reports that at least seven miners have been killed in mining accidents in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in the last month alone.

The human rights watchdog in Pakistan said that it considers the continued use of internment centres and private jails a human rights travesty.