PAKISTAN

World Report 2001 Entry

World Report 2000 Entry

World Report 1999 Entry

World Report 1998 Entry

Prison Bound The Denial of Juvenile Justice in Pakistan
November 1999 (2424)
Children accused of committing criminal offenses in Pakistan are routinely tortured by police,  Human Rights Watch said today. Many of these children go on to spend months or even years in overcrowded detention facilities awaiting the conclusion of their trials. The treatment of children in detention violates Pakistani law, as well as the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly ten years ago this Saturday and ratified by Pakistan a year later. Despite a law that requires police to bring criminal suspects before a judge within twenty-four hours of arrest, children may spend as long as three months in detention before seeing a judge. Children share their cells with adults while in police custody, and like adult detainees, are routinely subjected to various forms of torture or ill-treatment, including being beaten, hung upside down, or whipped with a rubber strap or specially-designed leather slipper.uman Rights Watch calls on the Pakistani authorities to establish independent bodies to hear and investigate complaints of abuse by police and prison personnel, and to ensure the strict separation of adults and children deprived of their liberty. Authorities should also provide sufficient teaching staff and modern vocational training in each facility housing juveniles, and prohibit imposition of the death penalty on children under the age of eighteen.
(2424) 11/99, 147pp., ISBN 1-56432-242-2, $15.00
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 Crime or Custom Violence Against Women in Pakistan
October 1999 (2416)
In the wake of the military takeover in Pakistan, Human Rights Watch released this major report on the state of women's rights in the country. The 100-page report, Crime or Custom? Violence Against Women in Pakistan, documents a virtual epidemic of crimes of violence against women, including domestic violence rates as high as 90 percent, at least eight reported rapes every 24 hours nationwide, and an alarming rise in so-called honor killings.Violence against women has risen to staggering levels. Women's low social status and a long established pattern of active suppression of women's rights by successive governments has contributed to the escalation in violence. No government has acknowledged the scale and severity of the problem much less taken action to end the violence against women. When a Commission of Inquiry for women convened by the Pakistan Senate described domestic violence as one of the country's most pervasive violations of human rights, its findings were brushed aside by the Sharif government. As a result of such dismissive official attitudes, crimes of violence against women continue to be perpetrated with near total impunity.
(2416), 10/99, 101 pp., ISBN 1-56432-241-6 , $10.00
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Contemporary Forms of Slavery in Pakistan
Throughout Pakistan employers forcibly extract labor from adults and children, restrict their freedom of movement, and deny them the right to negotiate the terms of their employment. Employers coerce such workers into servitude through physical abuse, forced confinement, and debt-bondage. The government of Pakistan is complicit in these abuses, both by the direct involvement of the police and through the state's failure to protect the rights of bonded laborers. It rarely prosecutes or punishes employers who hold workers in servitude, and workers who contest their exploitation are often imprisoned under false charges. We call on the government of Pakistan to comply with its own national laws as well as with international human rights and labor laws outlawing bonded labor, to ensure that all workers are allowed to organize and be represented by unions, and to prosecute to the full extent of the law employers who have held workers in bonded labor and those who have physically or sexually abused bonded laborers.
(1541) 7/95, 96 pp., ISBN 1-56432-154-1, $7.00/£5.95
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Persecuted Minorities and Writers in Pakistan
Government efforts to Islamicize Pakistan's civil and criminal law, which began in earnest in the early 1980s, have dangerously undermined fundamental rights of freedom of religion and expression, and have led to serious abuses against the country's religious minorities. Several hundred people have been arrested under these laws since 1984, and two men, a Christian and a Muslim, have been sentenced to death for blasphemy.
(C513) 9/93, 22 pp., $3.00/£1.95
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DOUBLE JEOPARDY
Police Abuse of Women in Pakistan
Over 70 percent of women in jail in Pakistan report sexual abuse by police officials. Despite the high incidence of rape and sexual torture of female detainees, no police official has been subjected to criminal punishment for these abuses. Moreover even basic protections -- including requirements that female detainees be interrogated only in the presence of a female officer are routinely violated. Over 60 percent of women prisoners in Pakistan are detained under the Hudood Ordinance, penal laws prohibiting sex outside of marriage, which have had a devastating impact on women's rights. In some cases women have been imprisoned because they were unable to prove a rape charge and were thus charged with impermissible sex and imprisoned pending trial. Double Jeopardy, co-authored by the Women's Rights Project and Asia Watch, documents many cases of women who have been victims of Pakistan's discriminatory legal system and of police abuses and also makes recommendations to the government of Pakistan to end these abuses.
(0634) 5/92, 100 pp., ISBN 1-56432-063-4, $10.00/£8.95
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