Kindly Resume Hanging

By Amir Zia
The News
July 8, 2013

The argument that capital punishment remains 'irreversible' and cannot be undone if a person is wrongfully convicted is not very convincing. Flaws in the legal system, investigations, policing and corruption cannot be used as an excuse to abolish the death penalty altogether in developing countries like Pakistan.

Amnesty International has urged Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's government to continue with the moratorium on the death penalty that remained in place all through the PPP's five-year rule during which only one soldier was hanged to death on military court orders. Some of the leading voices of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) are also all out on the advocacy campaign to build pressure on the PML-N to stop it from implementing the much-awaited decision of reviving capital punishment.
But should the new rulers take this advice seriously? Are these respected right campaigners taking into account the country's objective conditions while demanding the abolishment of the death penalty? And has this ban helped the country reduce incidences of crime and terrorism or only protected killers, child rapists and terrorists?
The former PPP government – best remembered for its mega corruption, inefficiency and misrule – introduced a distortion in Pakistan's legal and justice system by placing a ban on executions soon after it came to power. The PPP implemented its half-baked idea without consulting various stakeholders and in breach of the constitution of Pakistan.
The former government also did not bother to come up with any alternate plan to fill the vacuum created following the ban on capital punishment in the country, which remains wrecked by lawlessness, soaring crime, extremism and terrorism. It made no attempt to fix the self-created dichotomy in the legal system, which provides the death penalty as punishment on at least 27 counts – from murder to rape and treason and kidnapping to sabotage of the railway system, arms trading, drug smuggling and blasphemy. The PPP's kindness to death row convicts resulted in the increase in their numbers in prisons to hit an all-time high of around 8,000 by early 2013.
This may have pleased the European Union or human rights groups – especially the local ones, but it came at a heavy cost for Pakistan. Many death-row convicts involved in terrorism continued to operate terror cells from prisons. They threatened judges, ordered execution of rivals and planned bomb attacks from the safety of their prison cells. Many managed to escape in various jail breaks to resume their activities of killing soldiers, policemen, and unarmed civilians, including women and children.

In a country where thousands die every year in terrorism and organised political and sectarian violence, it is shocking that the state failed to punish even one person. The number of convictions dropped. According to senior security officials, in a crime-infested city like Karachi, the rate of acquittal of people involved in terrorism and other heinous crimes stands at more than 90 percent.

By showing mercy to mass murderers, killers, rapist and terrorists, the former government and the so-called rights supporters indeed have been brutally unkind to the victims and their families.

This flawed policy of appeasement of western powers and rights groups, coupled with the former government's failure to pursue even those big terrorism cases where there remained hardly any doubt, only emboldened criminals and terrorists. Governor Punjab Salmaan Taseer was assassinated by his own security guard, but the former ruling party proved too weak to bring the accused to justice in this open-and-shut case. Unfortunately, Taseer's case is not the only one to meet this fate. There have been countless others in which known terrorists managed to stall justice – and this moratorium on the death penalty played a key role in empowering them.

The Islamic injunctions of Qisas and Diyat are already being misused and exploited by the rich and powerful to escape justice. The moratorium on the death penalty complicated the situation further. Therefore, some of the leading judges of superior courts and lawyers have been demanding that the government should lift the ban on hanging to ensure justice.

The arguments of rights groups in favour of abolishing the death penalty are clichéd, self-defeating and fail to match the Pakistani reality.

To begin with, the movement against the death penalty is a European concept that has its roots in a particular social, political and economic evolution and history. It cannot be 'copy-pasted' to Pakistan or any other Asian and African country that has remained opposed to this concept because they stand at a different level of evolutionary and development cycle.

The 'civilised Europe' of today has had its share of internal bloody conflicts and wars till as recently as the mid and late 20th century. European nations also managed to create a society which by and large ensured a minimum standard of equitable development, living standards and education for its citizens.

Those non-western nations that have abolished the death penalty also managed to match the socio-economic development and political standards of Europe to an extent. None of them face a grave law and order and internal security challenge like Pakistan where bombings, targeted killings, kidnappings for ransom, murders and the general state of lawlessness remain the order of the day. The particular challenges Pakistan faces today call for tougher measures that include bringing perpetrators of heinous crimes to quick justice.

The argument that capital punishment remains 'irreversible' and cannot be undone if a person is wrongfully convicted is not very convincing. Flaws in the legal system, investigations, policing and corruption cannot be used as an excuse to abolish the death penalty altogether in developing countries like Pakistan. Those demanding revival of the capital punishment nowhere say that they want the innocent to be hanged.

The pro-capital punishment voices are not of bloodthirsty lunatics, but of those who stand for rule of law and justice. The government must ensure that the weaknesses and flaws of the legal and investigation system should be removed so that only the guilty get punished and wrong convictions are prevented.
The anti-death penalty campaigners admit that an overwhelming number of Pakistanis want those involved in heinous crimes to be executed as per law and constitution. Their demand is understandable as this majority remains at the mercy of criminals and terrorists, who operate without any fear of the law.

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif should act fast in consultation with the superior judiciary and the security establishment to ensure the supremacy of the law. And one small step in this direction is to immediately end the moratorium on the implementation of the death penalty which would go a long way to deter crime and terrorism. The government should also ensure that there is no misuse of the blasphemy laws. All the political and religious forces in the country stand on common ground on this issue.

Unfortunately, anti-death penalty activists also ignore the fact that keeping a death row convict in a prison for years and years at a stretch costs much more than his or her execution. This is hardly an option in countries like Pakistan where prisons are over-crowded and are not places from where a person can come out as a reformed and law-abiding individual. The continued ban on the death penalty only breeds crime and stokes passions for private vengeance.
Today's Pakistan desperately needs rule of law. Even a bad law would serve the country better than its current state of lawlessness. The campaign against ending the moratorium on the death sentence is not central to the life and death issues the country faces today. The Sharif government must make the right choice and let the caravan move on.