Abolishing the Death Penalty
PAKISTAN deserves strong censure for topping the list of countries with the largest number of convicts on death row. According to Amnesty International, more than 7,000 persons are facing the gallows while 82 — the third highest figure globally — were executed last year, a considerable increase from 2005 when 31 death sentences were carried out. It also has the dubious distinction of being the only country, apart from Iran, to have executed, in 2006, a convicted murderer who was a juvenile at the time of his crime. This was in violation of the Convention of the Rights of the Child which Pakistan ratified in 1990 and which forbids the execution of persons who have committed a crime punishable by death before they turned 18. More and more countries are either abolishing the death penalty or have stopped invoking it as they realise the futility of its application in deterring further crime and so view it as contrary to the norms of civilised society. So far 89 countries have abolished it while 29 have not carried out executions for the past 10 years. Among them are some Muslim countries.
It is unfortunate that Pakistan is not among them, especially when there are few signs that justice is even-handed in the country. Most of those who go to the gallows are poor, unable to afford proper legal assistance or the blood money demanded by the murdered victim’s family. There is excessive corruption in both police and judicial ranks which could tilt the case in favour of the richer party. Intimidation of witnesses and the extraction of forced confessions by the police are another unsavoury dimension of the judicial and investigative process. Human rights bodies have pointed out that the absence of effective forensic technology and the heavy reliance on oral evidence have also contributed to unfair trials, resulting in a grave miscarriage of justice in many cases. All moral arguments in favour of capital punishment lose their validity in the light of these facts and the truth that carrying out the death sentence is an irreversible act. Should Pakistan then continue to be in the camp of those countries that retain it?
http://www.dawn.com/2007/04/30/ed.htm#2