Executing juveniles

Pakistan is one of the few countries in the world that continues to mercilessly execute prisoners for crimes committed when they were juveniles even though it has passed laws banning it. The Juvenile Justice System Ordinance 2000 explicitly states that no child shall be awarded punishment of death while Pakistan has also ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, both of which forbid capital punishment for juveniles. Yet, according to a report from the Justice Project Pakistan, about 10 percent – or 800 persons – of the death row population is made up of juvenile offenders. Since 2015, when that eerie pre-dawn walk to the gallows began once again, at least six persons who were juveniles at the time of the crime they were found guilty of having committed have been hanged. The youngest amongst them was only 14 when accused of murder. In the case of Aftab Bahadur, to whom the report is dedicated, the boy convicted at the age of 14 of murder spent 24 years in jail before he was hanged while the man who had testified against him stood outside the police gates crying and screaming that his testimony had been extracted through coercion.

The reason we continue to execute juvenile offenders is because, at least in practice, the state has decided that the Juvenile System Ordinance does not extend to anti-terrorism courts. Since anti-terrorism courts now hear all manner of cases unrelated to terrorism, this is used as a loophole to execute juvenile offenders. In addition, the courts put the burden of proof on establishing their age on the defendants themselves. According to the JPP, the courts do not even accept Nadra-issued identification documents as they are said to be unreliable. But the onus should then be on the state to ascertain the correct age of a defendant rather than forcing the defendants themselves, who are usually poor and uneducated, to prove it. The courts could also order bone density test – which has a margin of error of two years – to better determine age, with the benefit of the doubt given to the defendant. More than anything else, we need to change how we think of juvenile offenders. Incarceration should be used sparingly and where it is deemed necessary, the focus should be on reform, not punishment. The children who are sent to prison need to be given an education, taught necessary life skills and given access to counselling. And they should never be kept in the same prison as adults, as happens regularly in Pakistan. In prison, children are more vulnerable to torture, rape and beatings, and are likely to be far more damaged when they are released from prison than when they first entered it. That this happens so often is an indictment of Pakistan’s justice system and highlights the dangers of using the death penalty so frequently in a situation where there is no guarantee that persons will receive the justice due to them under the law.