TOWARD A TORTURE FREE PAKISTAN: IMPLEMENTING CAT, CHALLENGES AND PROSPECTS
Abstract
By June 2010, Pakistan is the 147th Nation-state to ratify the U.N. Convention against Torture (CAT). For over six plus decades of its existence, the country has had witnessed frequent ruthless military regimes and pseudo-democratic dispensations. As an intruder, the former largely relied upon horrendously systematized practices of torture and ill-treatments to subjugate the democratic forces in the lust of perpetual sway, while the latter, preferred to use the indiscriminate tortuous methods against its political opponents, activists, writers, legal practitioners, journalists, students and all those likely to pose any detriment to their virtual oligarchy.
Besides comprehensively deliberating upon the excessive tethering of reservations by the Government of Pakistan to the key and operative provisions of CAT and their legitimacy under the jurisprudence of International law, this Article explores the constitutional protections accorded to the cavalier law enforcement agencies and the consequent bleak scenario in the human rights milieu in the polity. Moreover, it undertakes a critical study of the Sharia laws vis-à-vis swirling allegations by the human rights organizations as to the punishments being cruel, inhuman and degrading. The recipe of disaster is an inevitability rather than a choice in the absence of establishment of National and Provincial Commissions for Human Rights and Human Rights Courts in the state. Aiming at initiating a constructive debate within the civil society, academia, legislature, media circles and the legal fraternity, this Article argues a strong case for the comprehensive implementation of the Torture Convention at home to ensure due honor and integrity to the citizens of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan.
Suggested Citation