Public hanging: PBC condemns NA resolution

The Pakistan Bar Council (PBC) has strongly condemned the resolution passed in the National Assembly by a majority vote regarding public hanging for the people convicted for sexually abuse and murder of children for being in "violation of the constitution and the Islamic principles".

A statement issued by the council secretary on Saturday stated the resolution was against human dignity and violative of Article 14 of the Constitution.

The government and the National Assembly is therefore called upon to immediately withdraw the most controversial resolution to safeguard human dignity, otherwise the legal fraternity will start a mass movement against it besides challenging the same in the court of law, the statement added.

The PBC Vice-Chairperson, Abid Saqi, maintained that it was ironic that a resolution having no legal status and also in violation of the verdicts of the superior courts of the country against public hangings, had been passed despite opposition by the members of the National Assembly belonging to the treasury, as well as opposition.

The Supreme Court in its judgment reported in 1994 SCMR 1028, observed that public hangings even for the worst of criminals, violate the right to human dignity as enshrined in Article 14, and the right to protection from torture articulated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Islam, a charter produced by leading Muslim scholars in London in April, 1980.

Saqi stated that Article 7 of the Charter declared that a state is not permitted to torture a criminal, especially a suspect. In this age of social advancement when death sentence, even in general criminal cases, has been abolished in many countries of the world, any attempt to legalise public hanging of the people accused of a criminal act of any magnitude, cannot be justified and supported.