Hi there,
Below is the extract from the World Report 2012 of Human Rights Watch watch relates to "Pakistan". For full report please click on the link below. Pakistan is also mentioned in this report in other parts of the document.
Thank you
http://multimedia.hrw.org/world_report/wr-download.html
PAKISTAN.
Pakistan had a disastrous year in 2011, with increasing attacks on civilians by
militant groups, skyrocketing food and fuel prices, and the assumption of neartotal
control of foreign and security policy by a military that operated with complete
impunity. Religious minorities faced unprecedented insecurity and persecution.
Freedom of belief and expression came under severe threat as Islamist
militant groups murdered Punjab Governor Salmaan Taseer and Federal
Minorities Minister Shahbaz Bhatti over their public support for amending the
countrys often abused blasphemy laws. Pakistans elected government notably
failed to provide protection to those threatened by extremists, or to hold the
extremists accountable.
In August and September the southern province of Sindh experienced massive
flooding for the second year running, displacing some 700,000 people.
Pakistans largest city, Karachi, suffered from hundreds of targeted killings perpetrated
by armed groups who are patronized by political parties.
Security continued to deteriorate in 2011, with militant and sectarian groups
carrying out suicide bombings and targeted killings across the country. The
Taliban and affiliated groups targeted civilians and public spaces, including
marketplaces and religious processions. Ongoing rights concerns include the
breakdown of law enforcement in the face of terror attacks, a dramatic increase
in killings across the southwestern province of Balochistan, continuing torture
and ill-treatment of criminal suspects, and unresolved enforced disappearances
of terrorism suspects and opponents of the military. Abuses by Pakistani
police, including extrajudicial killings, also continued to be reported throughout
the country in 2011.
Relations between Pakistan and the United StatesPakistans most significant
ally and its largest donor of civilian and military aiddeteriorated markedly in
2011, fueled by a diplomatic crisis over a CIA contractor killing two men at a
Lahore traffic junction and the USs killing of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.
Balochistan
Conditions markedly deteriorated in the mineral-rich province of Balochistan.
Human Rights Watch documented continued disappearances and an upsurge
in killings of suspected Baloch militants and opposition activists by the military,
intelligence agencies, and the paramilitary Frontier Corps. Baloch nationalists
and other militant groups also stepped up attacks on non-Baloch civilians,
teachers, and education facilities, as well as against security forces in the
province. Pakistans military continued to publicly resist government reconciliation
efforts and attempts to locate ethnic Baloch who had been subject to disappearances.
The government appeared powerless to rein in the militarys
abuses.
Human Rights Watch recorded the killing of at least 200 Baloch nationalist
activists during the year, as well as dozens of new cases of disappearances.
The dead included Abdul Ghaffar Lango, a prominent Baloch nationalist
activist, and Hanif Baloch, an activist with the Baloch Students Organisation
(Azad).
Since the beginning of 2011, human rights activists and academics critical of
the military have also been killed in the province. They include Siddique Eido, a
coordinator for the nongovernmental Human Rights Commission of Pakistan
(HRCP); Saba Dashtiyari, a professor at the University of Balochistan and an
acclaimed Baloch writer and poet; and Baloch politician Abdul Salam. Three
employees of the BGP Oil and Gas company were killed and four injured in an
attack in eastern Balochistan in September; the Baloch Liberation Army, a militant
group, claimed responsibility for the attack.
Religious Minorities
Across Pakistan attacks took place against Shia and other vulnerable groups.
Sunni militant groups, such as the supposedly banned Lashkar-e Jhangvi, operated
with impunity even in areas where state authority is well established, such
as the Punjab province and Karachi. On September 19, 26 members of the
Hazara community travelling by bus to Iran to visit Shia holy sites were forced
to disembark by gunmen near the town of Mastung and shot dead. Three others
were killed as they took the injured to a hospital. Lashkar-e-Jhangvi claimed
responsibility. On October 4, gunmen riding on motorbikes stopped a bus carrying
mostly Hazara Shia Muslims who were headed to work at a vegetable market
on the outskirts of Quetta, Balochistans capital. The attackers forced the
passengers off the bus, made them stand in a row, and opened fire, killing 13
and wounding 6.In 2001 Aasia Bibi, a Christian from Punjab province, became the first woman in
the countrys history to be sentenced to death for blasphemy. She continued to
languish in prison after the Lahore High Court, in a controversial move, prevented
President Asif Ali Zardari from granting her a pardon in November 2010.
High-ranking officials of the ruling Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) called for her
release and the amendment of section 295(C) of Pakistans penal code, otherwise
known as the blasphemy law. However, the government succumbed to
pressure from extremist groups and dropped the proposed amendment.
Ruling party legislator Sherry Rehman, who tabled the amendment, received
multiple public death threats in the face of government inaction. On January 4
Punjab Governor Salmaan Taseer was assassinated by a member of his security
detail for supporting the amendment. On March 2 Federal Minister for
Minorities Shahbaz Bhatti was shot dead for the same reason. While Taseers
alleged assassin was arrested on the spot, the government reacted to the murders
by seeking to appease extremists rather than hold them accountable.
Emboldened extremists exploited the governments passivity by intimidating
minorities further, and the year saw an upsurge of blasphemy cases and allegations.
Minorities, Muslims, children, and persons with mental disabilities have
all been charged under the law.
Members of the Ahmadi religious community also continue to be a major target
for blasphemy prosecutions and are subjected to specific anti-Ahmadi laws
across Pakistan. They also face increasing social discrimination, as illustrated
by the October expulsion of 10 students from a school in Hafizabad, Punjab
province, for being Ahmadi. In November, four Hindus, three of them doctors,
were killed in an attack by religious extremists in the town of Shikarpur in
Sindh province, sending shockwaves through the minority community.
Womens Rights
Mistreatment of women and girlsincluding rape, domestic violence, and
forced marriageremains a serious problem. Public intimidation of, and threats
to, women and girls by religious extremists increased in major cities in 2011.
In a disappointing development, the government failed to honor its commitment
to reintroduce the Domestic Violence (Prevention and Protection) Bill,
unanimously passed by the National Assembly in August 2009, but lapsed after
the Senate failed to pass it within three months as required under Pakistans
constitution. In April the Supreme Court upheld a 2005 ruling by the provincial
Lahore High Court acquitting five of the six men accused of the gang-rape of
Mukhtar Mai, a villager from Muzaffargarh district in Punjab province, who was
raped on the orders of a village council in 2002.
Militant Attacks and Counterterrorism
Suicide bombings, armed attacks, and killings by the Taliban, al Qaeda, and
their affiliates targeted nearly every sector of Pakistani society, including journalists
and religious minorities, resulting in hundreds of deaths. The US and
others alleged that the military and Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) were complicit
with these networks, claims the military and government adamantly
denied. Security forces routinely violate basic rights in the course of counterterrorism
operations. Suspects are frequently detained without charge or are convicted
without a fair trial. Thousands of suspected members of al Qaeda, the Taliban,
and other armed groupswho were rounded up in a country-wide crackdown
that began in 2009 in Swat and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas
remain in illegal military detention; few have been prosecuted or produced
before the courts. The army continues to deny lawyers, relatives, independent
monitors, and humanitarian agency staff access to persons detained in the
course of military operations.
Aerial drone strikes by the US on suspected members of al Qaeda and the
Taliban in northern Pakistan continued in 2011, with some 70 strikes taking
place through early November. As in previous years these strikes were often
accompanied by claims of large numbers of civilian casualties, but lack of
access to the conflict areas has prevented independent verification.
Karachi
Karachi experienced an exceptionally high level of violence during the year,
with some 800 persons killed. The killings were perpetrated by armed groups
patronized by all political parties with a presence in the city. The Muttaheda
Qaumi Movement (MQM), Karachis largest political party, with heavily armed
cadres and a well-documented history of human rights abuse and political violence,
was widely viewed as the major perpetrator of targeted killings. The
Awami National Party (ANP) and PPP-backed Aman (Peace) Committee killed
MQM activists. Despite an October 6 Pakistan Supreme Court ruling calling for
an end to the violence, authorities took no meaningful measures to hold perpetrators
accountable.
Freedom of Media
At least six journalists were killed in Pakistan during the year. Saleeem
Shahzad, a reporter for the Hong Kong-based Asia Times Online and the Italian
news agency Adnkronos International, disappeared from central Islamabad, the
capital, on the evening of May 29, 2011. Shahzad had received repeated and
direct threats from the militarys dreaded ISI agency. Shahzads body, bearing
visible signs of torture, was discovered two days later on May 31, near Mandi
Bahauddin, 80 miles southeast of Islamabad. Following an international and
domestic furor caused by the murder, a judicial commission was formed within
days to probe allegations of ISI complicity. On August 9 Human Rights Watch
testified before the commission. At this writing the commission had not
announced its findings.
Earlier, on January 13, Geo TV reporter Wali Khan Babar was shot and killed in
Karachi shortly after covering gang violence in the city. On May 10 Tribal Union
of Journalists President Nasrullah Khan Afridi was killed when his car blew up in
Peshawar; the provincial information minister described the act as a targeted
killing by the Taliban. On August 14 thugs killed online news agency reporter
Munir Ahmed Shakir after he covered a demonstration by Baloch nationalists in
the Khuzdar district, Balochistan. On November 5 the body of Javed Naseer
Rind, a sub-editor with the Urdu-language Daily Tawar, was found with torture
marks and gunshot wounds in the town of Khuzdar in Balochistan province. He
had been missing since September 9.
A climate of fear impedes media coverage of military and militant groups.
Journalists rarely report on human rights abuses by the military in counterterrorism
operations, and the Taliban and other armed groups regularly threaten
media outlets over their coverage.
Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry and the provincial high courts effectively muzzled
media criticism of the judiciary in 2011 through threats of contempt of
court proceedings, as has been the case since Pakistans independent judiciary
was restored to office in 2009. In a positive development, journalists vocally
critical of the government experienced less interference from elected officials
than in previous years.
Key International Actors
The US remained Pakistans most significant ally and was the largest donor of
civilian and military aid to Pakistan, but relations deteriorated markedly in
2011. A major diplomatic crisis erupted on January 27 when Raymond Davis, a
CIA contractor, shot two men dead at a Lahore traffic junction. While the US
maintained that Davis had diplomatic immunity, Pakistans Foreign Ministry
disputed the claim. Davis was released on March 16 after US$2.4 million was
paid in blood money compensation to the victims families under the countrys
controversial Islamic law.
Further strains developed after a successful US operation in the city of
Abbotabad killed al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. In July the US announced it
was withholding some $800 million in military aid to Pakistan. Relations deteriorated
still further over Pakistans allegedly persistent support for Haqqani
network militants, a group US officials accused of targeting the US Embassy
and US troops in Afghanistan.
In October 2010 the US sanctioned six units of the Pakistani military operating
in the Swat valley under the Leahy Law. That law requires the US State
Department to certify that no military unit receiving US aid is involved in gross
human rights abuses and, when such abuses are found, they are to be thoroughly
and properly investigated. Despite pledges, Pakistan did not take any
action in 2011 to hold perpetrators of abuse accountable as required under the
law. In several instances in Swat, Balochistan, and the tribal areas, US aid to
Pakistan appeared to continue to contravene the Leahy Law.
As tensions increased between the US and Pakistan, neighboring China repeatedly
expressed support for Pakistan. Relations between Pakistan and nuclear
rival India remained tense, although in a significant move Pakistan granted its
larger neighbor Most Favored Nation trade status in November.
Below is the extract from the World Report 2012 of Human Rights Watch watch relates to "Pakistan". For full report please click on the link below. Pakistan is also mentioned in this report in other parts of the document.
Thank you
http://multimedia.hrw.org/world_report/wr-download.html
PAKISTAN.
Pakistan had a disastrous year in 2011, with increasing attacks on civilians by
militant groups, skyrocketing food and fuel prices, and the assumption of neartotal
control of foreign and security policy by a military that operated with complete
impunity. Religious minorities faced unprecedented insecurity and persecution.
Freedom of belief and expression came under severe threat as Islamist
militant groups murdered Punjab Governor Salmaan Taseer and Federal
Minorities Minister Shahbaz Bhatti over their public support for amending the
countrys often abused blasphemy laws. Pakistans elected government notably
failed to provide protection to those threatened by extremists, or to hold the
extremists accountable.
In August and September the southern province of Sindh experienced massive
flooding for the second year running, displacing some 700,000 people.
Pakistans largest city, Karachi, suffered from hundreds of targeted killings perpetrated
by armed groups who are patronized by political parties.
Security continued to deteriorate in 2011, with militant and sectarian groups
carrying out suicide bombings and targeted killings across the country. The
Taliban and affiliated groups targeted civilians and public spaces, including
marketplaces and religious processions. Ongoing rights concerns include the
breakdown of law enforcement in the face of terror attacks, a dramatic increase
in killings across the southwestern province of Balochistan, continuing torture
and ill-treatment of criminal suspects, and unresolved enforced disappearances
of terrorism suspects and opponents of the military. Abuses by Pakistani
police, including extrajudicial killings, also continued to be reported throughout
the country in 2011.
Relations between Pakistan and the United StatesPakistans most significant
ally and its largest donor of civilian and military aiddeteriorated markedly in
2011, fueled by a diplomatic crisis over a CIA contractor killing two men at a
Lahore traffic junction and the USs killing of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.
Balochistan
Conditions markedly deteriorated in the mineral-rich province of Balochistan.
Human Rights Watch documented continued disappearances and an upsurge
in killings of suspected Baloch militants and opposition activists by the military,
intelligence agencies, and the paramilitary Frontier Corps. Baloch nationalists
and other militant groups also stepped up attacks on non-Baloch civilians,
teachers, and education facilities, as well as against security forces in the
province. Pakistans military continued to publicly resist government reconciliation
efforts and attempts to locate ethnic Baloch who had been subject to disappearances.
The government appeared powerless to rein in the militarys
abuses.
Human Rights Watch recorded the killing of at least 200 Baloch nationalist
activists during the year, as well as dozens of new cases of disappearances.
The dead included Abdul Ghaffar Lango, a prominent Baloch nationalist
activist, and Hanif Baloch, an activist with the Baloch Students Organisation
(Azad).
Since the beginning of 2011, human rights activists and academics critical of
the military have also been killed in the province. They include Siddique Eido, a
coordinator for the nongovernmental Human Rights Commission of Pakistan
(HRCP); Saba Dashtiyari, a professor at the University of Balochistan and an
acclaimed Baloch writer and poet; and Baloch politician Abdul Salam. Three
employees of the BGP Oil and Gas company were killed and four injured in an
attack in eastern Balochistan in September; the Baloch Liberation Army, a militant
group, claimed responsibility for the attack.
Religious Minorities
Across Pakistan attacks took place against Shia and other vulnerable groups.
Sunni militant groups, such as the supposedly banned Lashkar-e Jhangvi, operated
with impunity even in areas where state authority is well established, such
as the Punjab province and Karachi. On September 19, 26 members of the
Hazara community travelling by bus to Iran to visit Shia holy sites were forced
to disembark by gunmen near the town of Mastung and shot dead. Three others
were killed as they took the injured to a hospital. Lashkar-e-Jhangvi claimed
responsibility. On October 4, gunmen riding on motorbikes stopped a bus carrying
mostly Hazara Shia Muslims who were headed to work at a vegetable market
on the outskirts of Quetta, Balochistans capital. The attackers forced the
passengers off the bus, made them stand in a row, and opened fire, killing 13
and wounding 6.In 2001 Aasia Bibi, a Christian from Punjab province, became the first woman in
the countrys history to be sentenced to death for blasphemy. She continued to
languish in prison after the Lahore High Court, in a controversial move, prevented
President Asif Ali Zardari from granting her a pardon in November 2010.
High-ranking officials of the ruling Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) called for her
release and the amendment of section 295(C) of Pakistans penal code, otherwise
known as the blasphemy law. However, the government succumbed to
pressure from extremist groups and dropped the proposed amendment.
Ruling party legislator Sherry Rehman, who tabled the amendment, received
multiple public death threats in the face of government inaction. On January 4
Punjab Governor Salmaan Taseer was assassinated by a member of his security
detail for supporting the amendment. On March 2 Federal Minister for
Minorities Shahbaz Bhatti was shot dead for the same reason. While Taseers
alleged assassin was arrested on the spot, the government reacted to the murders
by seeking to appease extremists rather than hold them accountable.
Emboldened extremists exploited the governments passivity by intimidating
minorities further, and the year saw an upsurge of blasphemy cases and allegations.
Minorities, Muslims, children, and persons with mental disabilities have
all been charged under the law.
Members of the Ahmadi religious community also continue to be a major target
for blasphemy prosecutions and are subjected to specific anti-Ahmadi laws
across Pakistan. They also face increasing social discrimination, as illustrated
by the October expulsion of 10 students from a school in Hafizabad, Punjab
province, for being Ahmadi. In November, four Hindus, three of them doctors,
were killed in an attack by religious extremists in the town of Shikarpur in
Sindh province, sending shockwaves through the minority community.
Womens Rights
Mistreatment of women and girlsincluding rape, domestic violence, and
forced marriageremains a serious problem. Public intimidation of, and threats
to, women and girls by religious extremists increased in major cities in 2011.
In a disappointing development, the government failed to honor its commitment
to reintroduce the Domestic Violence (Prevention and Protection) Bill,
unanimously passed by the National Assembly in August 2009, but lapsed after
the Senate failed to pass it within three months as required under Pakistans
constitution. In April the Supreme Court upheld a 2005 ruling by the provincial
Lahore High Court acquitting five of the six men accused of the gang-rape of
Mukhtar Mai, a villager from Muzaffargarh district in Punjab province, who was
raped on the orders of a village council in 2002.
Militant Attacks and Counterterrorism
Suicide bombings, armed attacks, and killings by the Taliban, al Qaeda, and
their affiliates targeted nearly every sector of Pakistani society, including journalists
and religious minorities, resulting in hundreds of deaths. The US and
others alleged that the military and Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) were complicit
with these networks, claims the military and government adamantly
denied. Security forces routinely violate basic rights in the course of counterterrorism
operations. Suspects are frequently detained without charge or are convicted
without a fair trial. Thousands of suspected members of al Qaeda, the Taliban,
and other armed groupswho were rounded up in a country-wide crackdown
that began in 2009 in Swat and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas
remain in illegal military detention; few have been prosecuted or produced
before the courts. The army continues to deny lawyers, relatives, independent
monitors, and humanitarian agency staff access to persons detained in the
course of military operations.
Aerial drone strikes by the US on suspected members of al Qaeda and the
Taliban in northern Pakistan continued in 2011, with some 70 strikes taking
place through early November. As in previous years these strikes were often
accompanied by claims of large numbers of civilian casualties, but lack of
access to the conflict areas has prevented independent verification.
Karachi
Karachi experienced an exceptionally high level of violence during the year,
with some 800 persons killed. The killings were perpetrated by armed groups
patronized by all political parties with a presence in the city. The Muttaheda
Qaumi Movement (MQM), Karachis largest political party, with heavily armed
cadres and a well-documented history of human rights abuse and political violence,
was widely viewed as the major perpetrator of targeted killings. The
Awami National Party (ANP) and PPP-backed Aman (Peace) Committee killed
MQM activists. Despite an October 6 Pakistan Supreme Court ruling calling for
an end to the violence, authorities took no meaningful measures to hold perpetrators
accountable.
Freedom of Media
At least six journalists were killed in Pakistan during the year. Saleeem
Shahzad, a reporter for the Hong Kong-based Asia Times Online and the Italian
news agency Adnkronos International, disappeared from central Islamabad, the
capital, on the evening of May 29, 2011. Shahzad had received repeated and
direct threats from the militarys dreaded ISI agency. Shahzads body, bearing
visible signs of torture, was discovered two days later on May 31, near Mandi
Bahauddin, 80 miles southeast of Islamabad. Following an international and
domestic furor caused by the murder, a judicial commission was formed within
days to probe allegations of ISI complicity. On August 9 Human Rights Watch
testified before the commission. At this writing the commission had not
announced its findings.
Earlier, on January 13, Geo TV reporter Wali Khan Babar was shot and killed in
Karachi shortly after covering gang violence in the city. On May 10 Tribal Union
of Journalists President Nasrullah Khan Afridi was killed when his car blew up in
Peshawar; the provincial information minister described the act as a targeted
killing by the Taliban. On August 14 thugs killed online news agency reporter
Munir Ahmed Shakir after he covered a demonstration by Baloch nationalists in
the Khuzdar district, Balochistan. On November 5 the body of Javed Naseer
Rind, a sub-editor with the Urdu-language Daily Tawar, was found with torture
marks and gunshot wounds in the town of Khuzdar in Balochistan province. He
had been missing since September 9.
A climate of fear impedes media coverage of military and militant groups.
Journalists rarely report on human rights abuses by the military in counterterrorism
operations, and the Taliban and other armed groups regularly threaten
media outlets over their coverage.
Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry and the provincial high courts effectively muzzled
media criticism of the judiciary in 2011 through threats of contempt of
court proceedings, as has been the case since Pakistans independent judiciary
was restored to office in 2009. In a positive development, journalists vocally
critical of the government experienced less interference from elected officials
than in previous years.
Key International Actors
The US remained Pakistans most significant ally and was the largest donor of
civilian and military aid to Pakistan, but relations deteriorated markedly in
2011. A major diplomatic crisis erupted on January 27 when Raymond Davis, a
CIA contractor, shot two men dead at a Lahore traffic junction. While the US
maintained that Davis had diplomatic immunity, Pakistans Foreign Ministry
disputed the claim. Davis was released on March 16 after US$2.4 million was
paid in blood money compensation to the victims families under the countrys
controversial Islamic law.
Further strains developed after a successful US operation in the city of
Abbotabad killed al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. In July the US announced it
was withholding some $800 million in military aid to Pakistan. Relations deteriorated
still further over Pakistans allegedly persistent support for Haqqani
network militants, a group US officials accused of targeting the US Embassy
and US troops in Afghanistan.
In October 2010 the US sanctioned six units of the Pakistani military operating
in the Swat valley under the Leahy Law. That law requires the US State
Department to certify that no military unit receiving US aid is involved in gross
human rights abuses and, when such abuses are found, they are to be thoroughly
and properly investigated. Despite pledges, Pakistan did not take any
action in 2011 to hold perpetrators of abuse accountable as required under the
law. In several instances in Swat, Balochistan, and the tribal areas, US aid to
Pakistan appeared to continue to contravene the Leahy Law.
As tensions increased between the US and Pakistan, neighboring China repeatedly
expressed support for Pakistan. Relations between Pakistan and nuclear
rival India remained tense, although in a significant move Pakistan granted its
larger neighbor Most Favored Nation trade status in November.
