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The case of the brutal torture of an inmate has been ignored by the media. One wonders why? Where is the outrage?

The Liberal media and the Western press hates the Taliban and the love the British System of Justice. However no one is outraged at the bloody torture of prisoners and the inhuman treatment meted out to the men and women most of whom are jailed for no reason at all. The innocent victim of biased justice simply have to bear the incarceration.

According to some estimates 60% of the prisoners in Pakistani prisons are innocent of the crimes that they are convicted of. The prisoners are the poor and the destitute who cannot afford attorneys who can get them off with NROs, bribes and intimidation. Ever heard of a rich person’s child go to prison in Pakistan? It doesn’t happen.

Where is the You Tube video of these men an women?

August 2, 2006: more than 7,400 men and 36 women are waiting in 81 Pakistani jails to be hanged, the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) has confirmed.

In Punjab, the country’s most populous province, more than 5,000 of its 53,000 prisoners face death. Many are serving their time confined to cells measuring just 10 sq metres. Intended for one prisoner, the cells often accommodate up to 10.  

Pakistan retains capital punishment by hanging for a range of offences, including murder, drug smuggling, rape, attempted murder, kidnapping and acts of terrorism. But the number of death sentences handed out annually far exceeds the number of hangings, meaning prisoners could remain in the terrible conditions on death row for up to 10 years, according to cases documented by the HRCP.
This year 253 people, including three women, have been sentenced to death, with 42 hanged.(Sources: IRIN, 02/08/2006) http://www.handsoffcain.info/archivio_news/200608.php?iddocumento=8328081&mover=0

The Lawyer’s movement marched on the streets of Islamabad’s Constitution Avenue for the restoration of the judges. However they did no march for a revolutionary improvement of the Judaical system. Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry took the oath of office from President Mushrraf wearing the British wig. Most attorneys still call the judges “My Lord” (which comes out like “Mee Lard”). It is disgusting to see the lines at he courts, with the prisoners brought in hand cuffs. 

Rape and sodomy is the norm in all prisons.

Pakistani prisoners have leg irons, and are subjected to the worst atrocities known to man.  If one does not know what a leg iron is, it a steel rod about half an inch thick and is clasped to both feet. This keeps the legs of hte prisoner apart so that he has limited motion and literally cannot walk. These leg irons are part of the British legacy.

Anglo Saxon law incarcerates prisons for crimes.  hese jails become rape and sodomy centers bringing out the worst beastliness, far removed from any semblance of humanity. The same conditions exists in the USA, UK, Australia and the rest of the world where the prison system exists. The USA has 5% of the world’s population but has the dubious distinction of owning 25% of the world’s prison population.

Where is the You Tube video of the torture of this young man?

Prison torture

Taking suo motu notice of the case, Chief Justice Tariq Pervez Khan of Peshawar High Court has constituted a two-member inquiry committee to look into the circumstances under which the assistant superintendent of Central Jail, Peshawar reportedly stripped naked a prison inmate from Kohat, serving life term in a murder case, and subjected him to brutal torture. The alleged atrocity came to light when the victim narrated his woeful tale to a visiting member of the inspection team. The victim said that the jail official beat him up so mercilessly and without any provocation that at one stage he suspected that the rival party had probably bribed the assistant superintendent to eliminate the murder convict physically. Ordering a medical examination of the complainant, the honourable judge suspended the jail official directing him not to come to his office as long as the probe lasted and asked the inquiry committee, comprising IG prisons and an additional member of the PHC inspection team, to submit a report by May 5 so that a regular hearing of the case may be continued.

Much has been said by the human rights organisations and written by the mainstream press about the poor plight of prisons and the inhuman conditions prevailing in them. The jail inmates have to do all sorts of domestic chores at the homes of prison wardens and then get thorough beatings for even suppressed grumblings over cruelty and callousness of the officers. Those who bribe, flatter or pamper the wardens are not only exempted from fatigue but also provided with all sorts of comforts and facilities within the four walls of the prison. On the other hand, those who are not in a position to offer gifts and cash are tortured brazenly. The PHC probe will hopefully bring a dose of reformation in its wake. The Statesman

The question is who will probe the cases of these incarcerated women who are living in jails in the fantastic Anglo Saxon system.

Malir jail – dawn Lahore: The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) has expressed serious concern at recent incidents of prison unrest in the country and asked the government to undertake urgent prison reform instead of depending on short-term measures. In a statement issued on Friday, HRCP said: “The recent rioting in prisons of Hyderabad, Karachi, Multan and Timergara and the loss of life there is tragic but unfortunately not unexpected. These incidents are a result of problems left unresolved for decades.

The issue is certainly bigger than prison riots or attempted jailbreaks alone. Appalling overcrowding, rampant corruption, torture, unhygienic food, lack of health facilities and staff training, tardy judicial process, inefficient investigation and prosecution are all key issues that have not been addressed and cannot be wished away.

Numerous committees set up in the past 20 years for prison reform have danced around these issues without meaningfully tackling them. Many useful proposals advanced by them have been ignored.

Measures such as suspending jail officials, registering cases against prisoners accused of rioting, and shifting detainees to other jails to avoid recurrence skirt the real issue. Reported torture and beating of prisoners following the riots is no solution, nor is providing police more teargas shells and smoke bombs, as is being considered following the riot in the Hyderabad jail.

According to the jail surgeon, the prisoners shot dead during rioting at Karachi’s Malir District Jail by guards had all been shot in the head or chest. This is hardly the ideal method for riot control or a use of minimum force needed to quell the rioting and points to deficient training for jail staff at the very least.

The top leadership of the country is aware of the problems facing the prison system as they too have served extended jail terms. They have also suggested immediate remedial measures, which must be implemented.

Prisoners’ rights, including their right to life and dignity, must be observed in all circumstances and their safety ensured. Punishments other than penal servitude should also be considered, especially for petty crimes, to reduce population of jails already holding prisoners many times over their capacity. Prisoners must also be allowed communication with their family and lawyers via phone, at least under supervision. The criminal justice system needs to be reviewed and an adequate number of judicial officers ensured to tackle undue delay in deciding cases. The approach toward the prison system needs to be changed – the prisoner and the jailer both need to be humanised and terms of service of jail staff improved. A change in the Code of Criminal Procedure in October 2001 took away a provision regarding mandatory bail to prisoners whose trial had not begun for two years. This was presumably done to deny the provision’s benefit to political prisoners, but has led to massive swelling in the prison population.

The government must earnestly pursue a crash programme to deal with the issues and ensure that reforming prisoners must be central to any prison reform initiative.”  Curbing jail riots impossible without prison reform: HRCP By HRCP Press Release, October 17, 2008

Who will take care of the children who are jailed under British laws in vogue in Pakistan.

 Where is the You Tube video of these children?

Child prisoners are brought to court in chains, against international law

Throughout Pakistan, thousands of children are locked inside police cells or overcrowded jails, victims of a justice system that treats the very young much the same as adults.

Kids as young as seven can spend years behind bars – before the courts have even decided if they are innocent or guilty.

“They are not taken seriously because children have no voice,” says Hina Jilani, a human rights lawyer and activist.

“The kind of children who get arrested are totally vulnerable because of lack of power and lack of resources. And that’s why a lot of them have been subjected to illegalities.”

Handcuffed and chained

Each morning, amid the chaos of Karachi’s packed main court, police vans pull up in the dusty courtyard and dozens of boys – some as young as 12 – clamber out.
The majority of child prisoners are acquitted when they finally reach court

 
Although Pakistani law forbids the use of chains for juveniles, these boys are handcuffed and attached to one another with a heavy iron chain.

And despite the fact that around half Pakistan’s population is under 18, the country has only one juvenile court. Elsewhere, children are tried in adult courts – in breach of international law.

Supreme court lawyer Zia Awan says children are at risk from the moment they are taken into custody.

“The treatment with the juvenile prisoners is very alarming in our country,” Mr Awan said.

Beaten with batons

His claim that torture is widespread is backed up by an independent NGO investigation which found that 70% of children who come into contact with the police are abused in some way.
The children, who are being used, are the ones who get penalised Zia Awan, supreme court lawyer

“It’s horrifying. There are beatings, or sometimes even sexual abuse. They are kept like slaves. Inside the police station, they are being tortured. All things aside from electric shocks are being used.” This includes beatings with leather whips, or being hung upside down to extract confessions.

“At the police station they beat me – four of them set about me with batons and they just kept beating me,” said Khadim, one boy who agreed to talk as long as his real name was not used.

“They kept asking me for information, and when I couldn’t tell them anything, they beat me. They only stopped because we paid them off. We gave the officer in charge a month’s wages to stop the beatings.”

At the time, Khadim was only 14, and both he and his older brother were charged with stealing – but it was days before the police notified their parents.

Although that is a violation of the law, it is not at all unusual.

Retired judge Nasir Zahed, who has been working at Karachi’s juvenile jail to improve the lives of youngsters, said that of 500 inmates, only 30 are convicts – the other 470 are under-trial prisoners.

“They arrest the juveniles, keep them in custody, one year, two years or three years,” he said.

“Then they release them or acquit them on account of the fact that there was no evidence.”

Fall guys

Elsewhere, children endure much greater hardship.

In some places they are herded together in stifling barracks, locked up for most of the day, with concrete slabs for beds, appalling sanitation and the constant threat of disease.
Children from the most poverty-stricken areas are most affected
And with most children imprisoned under the same roof as hardened adult criminals, they are easy prey.

“They conducted a raid in Hyderabad central jail some years ago, and found 50 children in jail for petty crimes who had been sexually abused because they were kept with the adult prisoners,” supreme court lawyer Zia Awan said.

“In the whole of Pakistan there is not a single facility for female juveniles. They are all kept with women who are drug addicts or drug dealers or maybe murderers.”

But it is difficult to assess the full impact of this, because there is no effective monitoring.

And human rights lawyer Hina Jilani said children are increasingly being sent to prison as fall guys for adult criminals, who use them to do their dirty work.

“The use of children for criminal activity is on the rise, because the ones who are using them are enjoying impunity,” she said.

“The children, who are being used, are the ones who get penalised.”

But the convicted children face lengthy sentences – often with compulsory labour. NGOs have reported that jail terms of 10 years or more are common, irrespective of a child’s crime.

Zia Awan worries about the consequences of such an uncaring system – both for the children involved and the whole of society.

“Trials are being delayed, they are not having contact with their families, legal aid is not being provided by the state, and then the children who are in prison are not being properly rehabilitated,” he said.

“When they come out they end up in some mafia syndicate… I think we have to see that these are our children. And these are time bombs.” Tragedy of Pakistan’s prison children By Vera Frankl

APPENDIX A 

Rights Of The Child: Children tortured and raped in jails across Pakistan

Ten years after world leaders pledged to act, the suffering of children around the world is as bad and frequent as ever

Peter Popham Friday, 19 November 1999

THE POLICE picked up Ghulam Jilani from his parents’ home on the morning of 12 May 1998. Home was a village in the hills of Hazara, in Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province. Ghulam was 13 and already earning his keep. After leaving school at 10, he worked as a minibus conductor.

The police wanted to see him because they had information that he had robbed a nearby shop of 2,700 rupees – about pounds 33. They took him down to the local police station. His family never saw him alive again.

At 4pm on the day of his arrest, police officer Muhammad Iqbal reported that Ghulam had hanged himself in the cell. Another boy, Sajid, who was sharing the cell, told a different story. “Ghulam was taken away,” he told a medical examiner. “When he was brought back he was bleeding from the nose and mouth.”

Ghulam Jilani was beaten to death by the police – and when word got around, the local community was so incensed that they rioted for three days. Two protesters died, but the police chief responsible was eventually arrested.

Ten years ago tomorrow the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted the Convention on the Rights of the Child, laying down basic standards of care and protection for children. But today children in many countries are abused as brutally as ever.

Pakistan ratified the convention in 1991. But a report published yesterday by Human Rights Watch, entitled Prison Bound – the Denial of Juvenile Justice in Pakistan, reveals that thousands of jailed Pakistani children continue to suffer many kinds of abuse.

These range from sex attacks to torture and murder, from confinement in conditions that breed disease to the use of leg irons. More than 80 per cent of the children held in Pakistani prisons are eventually acquitted but according to the report thousands spend months oryears on remand, crowded into insanitary lock-ups with hardened adult criminals, dependent on their families for food.

The majority of Pakistanis are children: according to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, 59 million – some 44 per cent of the total population – are under 15. And if, as the commission believes, 20 million children in the 5-to-15 age range are not attending school, that is roughly the number of Pakistan’s child labourers.

Western outrage about Pakistani child labour has affected only two industries, carpet weaving and football making,and even then only to a limited extent. Eighty per cent of the country’s working children are engaged in farming or the informal urban sector, where reform has had no impact.

Among the worst jobs performed by children in Pakistan are leather tanning, textile weaving, tobacco harvesting and making surgical instruments. Children working in tanneries suffer from skin disorders, stomach, kidney and lung ailments, and sun stroke.

Because children are so routinely sent to work, there are many cases of small children being kidnapped and sold for use as forced labour. Captured children may be forced to beg, to pick pockets, or be sent to the Gulf to work as camel jockeys.

Even those children fortunate enough to go to school have a brutal time of it. In one survey of middle school children in Karachi, more than 88 per cent were said to be physically and/or verbally abused by parents and teachers. In one madrasah – a Koranic seminary – in a suburb of Lahore, 14 children aged 7 to 17 were kept continually in chains for three years.

But it is the children in prison whose abuse is the most routine and inhuman. Most imprisoned children are held in company with adult prisoners. At the end of 1997, 3,700 children were in detention; most are held in police lock-ups.

A 15-year-old who spent a month in custody in Garden Town police station in Lahore said, “There were about 25 to 30 people in the jail. When there were more, we couldn’t lie down. Whenever it rained, water seeped in from the roof.”

Children in Pakistani prisons are often tortured – either to extract information or as punishment. Methods include severe beatings with rubber belts or leather implements, electric shocks, cuts, burns, and being hung upside down.

And although the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child explicitly bans the death penalty for offences committed by those under 18, in February 1998 – when the Human Rights Watch report was being researched – 55 children in Punjab’s prisons were on death row.

The most recent child to hang in Pakistan was Shamun Masih. Convicted of armed robbery and murder, committed when he was 14, he was executed on 30 September 1997.

SUFFERING

n More than 650 million children around the world live in absolute poverty.

n Nearly 250 million children work full time, often in dangerous conditions.

n 300,000 children – some as young as eight – are fighting in wars across the globe.