Pakistani prison officials have missed Tuesday’s court deadline to explain how they would hang a paraplegic man.Abdul Basit is paralysed from the waist down and uses a wheelchair after an illness he contracted while in prison. He was convicted six years ago of murder but maintains his innocence. He was to be hanged in Lahore last month but this was postponed. A petition for his pardon was dismissed.Hanging him would constitute cruel and degrading treatment, his lawyers say.They add that this is prohibited under Pakistani and international law.Pakistan has executed more than 200 people since reintroducing the death penalty in December 2014.At the time the government said it was a measure to combat terrorism after the Taliban massacred more than 150 people, most of them children, in a Peshawar school. Executions of the mentally ill violate the right to human dignity under the Constitution, and are an affront to Pakistan’s obligations under international law. Additionally, Section 84 of the Pakistan Penal Code does not allow the state to punish any person suffering from a “disorder of his mental capabilities” The fact that officials are prepared to hang Basit, despite knowing this, shows they are even prepared to bend Pakistan’s law to breaking point. Basit is not the only one. Justice Project Pakistan (JPP), a non- profit human rights law firm providing direct pro-bono legal and representative services to the most vulnerable prisoners in our system have appealed many cases just like his. Zainab Malik, a project manager at JPP, said to the Nation that the trial is a repeated script of a lack of diligence by trial courts, procedural oversight, records that suddenly go missing and incompetent legal representation. Whilst the wealthy and influential escape through the loopholes, “the poor, mentally ill, powerless and members of religious minorities are rushed to the gallows”. Mentally ill prisoners are stuffed in Pakistan death row cells alongside other inmates. These death row cells, measuring 8 by 12 feet, designed to house not more than two prisoners at a time. They currently hold on average 6 or more prisoners for over 23 hours a day. Whilst the Medical Health Ordinance was enacted in 2001 to provide protection and treatment to mentally ill prisoners the law receives little or no implementation nation-wide.Pakistan has the world’s largest number of death row inmates, with more than 8,000 people reported to be awaiting execution, and it is on course to have one of the highest rates of executions in the world.
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