Hotline Asia Urgent Appeals -- SUA080212(1)

Action Requested || Sample Letter || Background
Please respond immediately
update

Latest updates (3 March 2008): Our local contacts have confirmed that the execution date is postponed for the second time to 12 March, 2008. Your IMMEDIATE action is needed to request the authorities to halt the execution of Zahid Masih.

Summary

Zahid Masih, 28, a sanitary worker in the Pakistan Army, was given the death sentence by the Military Court since March 2006 for allegedly killing a minor. He was scheduled to be hanged on 30 January 2008, but after intervention of local human rights organizations and Church leaders, the execution date was postponed to 20 February 2008. According to the local source, despite being a civilian, he has been denied a fair trial in a Civil Court and access to a lawyer.

After joining the Army’s Multan Cantonment in August 2001 as a sanitary worker, Zahid Masih was transferred to Nowshera, North West Frontier Province in 2003, and has reportedly disappeared for 2 years. His family who has not known his whereabouts since the transfer, found him in Central jail at Peshawar charged with murder of a 9-year old boy, Muhammad Adnan.

Zahid has denied the charges and reported that his previous statement of admission was to avoid torture in custody.

The President can give pardon, and his family and local concern groups are hoping that another intervention can commute his death sentence before the execution date on 20 February 2008.

Action Requested

Please write polite letters to the President of Pakistan urging him to:
• halt the execution of Zahid Masih;
• conduct fair re-investigation and trial in the Civil Court; and
• take progressive steps to abolish death penalty.

Sample Letter

Background

Zahid Masih joined the Army’s Multan Cantonment in August 2001 as a sanitary worker. In 2003, he was transferred to Regiment/Unit 4 Commando Battalion (Special Service Group) in Chirat, another Cantonment settlement in district Nowshera, North West Frontier Province. He then reportedly disappeared from the work place and his whereabouts were not known to the family for about two years.

Zahid’s family later found him in Central jail at Peshawar booked for murder under Section 302 of Pakistan Penal Code (PPC). He was accused of committing sodomy and killing a nine-year-old boy Muhammad Adnan on 1 March 2005. The Military Court found Zahid guilty and awarded him death sentence on 10 March 2006. He was scheduled to be hanged on 30 January 2007.

According to a letter written to his brother, Zahid was tortured by the officials for 28 days to confess the offence. He was also denied access to a lawyer.

On 20 January 2008, Zahid’s mother wrote a mercy appeal to the president and on 28 January 2008 human rights organizations and Church leadership wrote letters to the authorities, including the President, to consider mercy appeal for Zahid Masih. They responded by delaying the execution for 20 days (31 January– 20 February 2008).

Death Penalty in the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC)
According to PPC 302, which Zahid Masih is charged under: whoever commits pre-meditated murder shall be punished with (a) death as "retaliation"; (b) death or imprisonment for life as corporal punishment to be administered at the discretion of the judge; and (c) imprisonment of up to 25 years, provided it is not committed in the name or the pretext of honour.

According to PPC section 304, the proof of murder could be in form of voluntary and true confession before a competent court that the accused committed the offence; and by evidence as provided in Article 17 of the Qanun-e-Shahadat, 1984 (P.O. No. 10 of 1984), based on the competence of a person to testify and the number of witnesses required accordingly.

Death Penalty in Pakistan
Pakistan is among the top in the list of countries with the most confirmed executions (along with China, Iran, Iraq, Sudan and USA). It has approximately 7,400 convicts awaiting execution.

According to the Amnesty International 2007 report, 82 persons were executed in 2006. A local source claimed that 109 people have been awarded death sentence in the first 9 months of 2007 and about 10,000 were executed in Pakistan in the past 11 years.

Negating the concept of deterrence, the crime rate has not lowered in recent years when more capital punishments have been ordered by the Supreme Court.

Local sources claim that the penal system in Pakistan is full of loopholes and defects. It may be better sometimes not to hang the alleged killers due to mal-administration of justice, police service dereliction, and cultural prejudices affecting women and religious minorities.

It has also been commented that the laws have become “tools for personal vendettas against vulnerable segments of society, including the poor and minorities” and are often “manipulated, especially in blasphemy cases, where both judicial system and police department investigate with bias, without checking veracity of the facts.”

Recent Effort against Death Penalty
About 100 Christians staged a procession on 30 November 2007 in Youhanabad, Lahore to voice their objection to death penalty in the country. Local members of the Sant’Egidio Community, a worldwide Catholic lay movement organized the event in response to Pakistan’s vote against a draft resolution passed by the Third Committee (Social, Humanitarian and Cultural) of the United Nations General Assembly, on 15 November 2007. The organizers also hoped to highlight the concern for the death penalty and create awareness about human rights and discrimination faced by the Christian minority.

The draft resolution called for a worldwide moratorium (or ban) on executions and was later passed by the UN General Assembly in December 2007. According to the UN web site, the Third Committee (Social, Humanitarian and Cultural) voted 99 to 52 with 33 abstentions in favour of the draft resolution, which states that “there is no conclusive evidence of the death penalty’s deterrent value and that any miscarriage of failure of justice in the death penalty’s implementation is irreversible and irreparable.” The UN General Assembly later adopted the draft resolution on 18 December 2007 by a vote of 104 in favour to 54 against, with 29 abstentions. Pakistan again voted against the resolution in the second occasion.

Source:
Local Sources
Local Newspapers
Union of Catholic Asian News
Amnesty International
United Nations website

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