ISLAMABAD: Pakistan People’s Party Senator Farhatullah Babar on Thursday asked political parties to agree on a charter of human rights based on the Charter of Democracy.
Babar was addressing a seminar on human rights challenges at the Pakistan Institute of Parliamentary Services. The event was organised by the Young Parliamentarians Forum (YPF), a group of 80 young, cross-party lawmakers.
He said the charter should focus on the right to life, liberty and security, and the four basic freedoms – freedom of expression, freedom of information, the right to assembly and the right to association.
Lamenting the fact that these freedoms were under constant threat, the senator said these freedoms were critical for citizens to record their concerns and voice their aspirations.
He said these rights had consistently been ignored and denied behind the façade of loosely defined ‘national security’. He urged political parties to work for balancing national security interests with the interests of the public.
Babar was of the view that in order to credibly advance human rights, the political parties would also have to reform themselves. He urged the YPF members to come together to fulfil this mission.
He warned that the absence of democracy in political parties diminished their ability to establish democratic governance, which was crucial to upholding human rights.
He asked the political parties to form human rights cells to keep an eye on the human rights situation in the country, adding that the PPP had already set up such cells.
Babar said, “The frontiers of human rights were expanding; what was a privilege yesterday has become a right today. Education and freedom of information were a privilege in the past but now they were a fundamental right.”
He added that gender equality and women’s empowerment were a taboo in the past but today they were in the forefront of rights.
He said human rights were indivisible and irreversible, and transcended national boundaries.
He called upon the YPF members to get passed the anti-torture bill from the National Assembly, adding that the bill had already been passed unanimously by the Senate in January 2015. He also called for the implementation of the report of a Senate’s committee regarding the issue of enforced disappearances.
Babar also stressed the need for review of the death penalty, citing the irreversibility of the decision and the possibility of wrong convictions. He quoted the recent example of the two convicts who were hanged before their conviction had been set aside and they were acquitted by the Supreme Court.
The senator lamented that there were 27 offences that carried the death penalty in Pakistan and asked whether Islam prescribed the death penalty for those 27 offences.
The PPP senator said, “We should ensure that after the sunset clause, the military courts were disbanded, as ordinary criminals, along with hardcore terrorists had also been hanged.”
Regarding missing persons, Babar called for bringing intelligence agencies under the ambit of the law.