Press release

HRCP general body calls for consensus on civilian autonomy, climate justice and land rights

Karachi, 17 November 2024. On concluding its 38th annual general meeting, the general body of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) draws urgent attention to deteriorating human rights and weakening democracy. It strongly opposes the proposed amendment to the Anti-Terrorism Act 1997 that seeks to authorize the armed forces and civil armed forces to employ 90-day preventive detention.

Where the state should be focusing on efforts to uphold the rule of law, reduce violence against women, children and transgender persons, protect the rights of workers and peasants, and fulfil people’s right to health and education, it has instead prioritized its own authority at the expense of democratic norms and people’s fundamental rights. HRCP calls on all political parties to reach a consensus on civilian autonomy and guarding federalism.

The government must focus on strengthening trade unions and seriously consider instituting a living wage, especially for vulnerable workers. HRCP also believes that the provision of healthcare and education is the duty of the state. Student unions must be restored and special attention paid to the plight of incarcerated fisherfolk, stateless persons and rising suicides triggered by poverty, particularly in Thar. The contentious provincial labour codes must be revisited in consultation with trade unions.

HRCP believes that the climate emergency is now an existential crisis for the country. The most pressing issues are the lethal levels of air pollution in Punjab, posing serious risks to health, and the immediate threat of water scarcity, especially in lower riparian Sindh, where the construction of canals on the Indus under the Green Pakistan Initiative has raised objections from small farmers and peasants.

We strongly oppose the Gilgit-Baltistan Land Reforms Bill 2024, which seeks to centralize control over private, communal and ancestral land in the guise of ‘reforms’ for development. This appropriation of land by powerful vested interests will further marginalize people and stoke unrest. The state must give Gilgit-Baltistan its due constitutional rights as demanded by its residents.

HRCP deplores the increasing use of short-term enforced disappearances, including against the political opposition, and calls once again for the head of the Commission of Inquiry on Enforced Disappearances to be removed for sheer incompetence.

The conduct of the state has been marked by violence with impunity and a tendency to succumb to far-right ideologies. This was evident from the extrajudicial killings of two people accused of blasphemy in Umerkot and Quetta, from continued attacks on Ahmadiyya graveyards and sites of worship with police complicity at the instigation of the TLP, and hundreds of mostly young people accused of online blasphemy languishing in Punjab jails amid allegations of the FIA’s involvement in their torture. The alarmingly high number of extrajudicial killings, especially in Sindh, must be investigated and perpetrators held to account.

HRCP notes with concern the fact that its chairperson was detained for questioning by the police and four FIRs filed against its members in connection with their human rights work.

The sharp rise in militancy in Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, including increasingly regular attacks on construction workers, miners and polio workers, is rapidly moving towards a point of no return. HRCP calls on Baloch and Baloch-Pashtun leaders to sit together and devise an independent solution to the crisis in the province. Pashtun leaders in Kurram must do the same to resolve the months-long conflict in the district.

HRCP wishes to draw special attention to the detention of human rights defender Idris Khattak, who has now spent five years in custody following a military trial on fabricated charges. He must be released immediately and unconditionally.

Asad Iqbal Butt
Chairperson