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Pakistan: Human Rights Assessments
September 19, 2022
Overview
Pakistan is identified by the U.S. State Department, United
Nations bodies, and some nongovernmental organizations
as the site of numerous human rights abuses, many of these
significant, and some seen to be perpetrated by agents of
the government. In recent decades, congressional legislation
and U.S. law also have included attention to the issue of
democratization in Pakistan. The following sections
describe selected areas of human rights concerns.
Democracy and Civil-Military Relations
Democracy and constitutionalism have fared poorly in
Pakistan since its 1947 independence. The State
Department's 2021 Country Reports on Human Rights
Practices (also known as Human Rights Reports or HRRs)
conveys that, While military and intelligence services
officially report to civilian authorities, they operate
independently and without effective civilian oversight.
According to U.S.-based nonprofit Freedom House,
Pakistan's military exerts enormous influence over
security and other policy issues, and exercises
formidable influence over electoral, policy, and
legislative outcomes. Freedom House contends that
military intelligence agencies act without oversight and
often without the public's knowing of their involvement.
Freedom House designates Pakistan as Partly Free, on a
downward trend since 2017, with a politicized judiciary
and evidence of biased law enforcement. The Sweden-
based Varieties of Democracies project classifies Pakistan
as an electoral autocracy in 2022 and ranks it 117th of 179
countries on a Liberal Democracy Index (just below
Honduras; the United States is 29th). U.S.-based Human
Rights Watch (HRW) described former Prime Minister
Imran Khan's April 2022 dissolution of the National
Assembly a threat to core democratic principles, and
argued this and other actions taken by Khan from 2018 to
2022 were an assault on the country's democracy.
Religious Freedom
Pakistan's population is approximately 97% Muslim. The
State Department's 2021 Report on International Religious
Freedom reports on abuses affecting religious minorities
there-including Shia and Ahmadi Muslims, among
others-as well as the increasing frequency of attempts to
kidnap, forcibly convert, and forcibly marry young women
and girls from religious minority communities, especially
Hindus and Christians. Experts at the Office of the U.N.
High Commissioner for Human Rights (OCHR) express
concern over continued persecution and acts of violence
perpetrated by state and non-state actors in Pakistan, fueled
by claims of apostasy and blasphemy. HRW likewise
assesses that, Blasphemy-related violence against religious
minorities, fostered in part by government persecution and
discriminatory laws, has increased.
The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom
has since 2002 recommended annually that Pakistan be
designated as a Country of Particular of Concern (CPC)
under the International Religious Freedom Act for
engaging in and tolerating systematic, ongoing, and
egregious violations of freedom of religion or belief. The
State Department has designated Pakistan as a CPC since
2018 while waiving any related country sanctions.
Press Freedom
The 2021 HRR states that threats, harassment, abductions,
violence, and killings [including by security forces] led
journalists and editors to practice self-censorship, while
court decisions interpreted the constitution as prohibiting
criticism of the military and judiciary. The Human Rights
Commission of Pakistan's (HRCP) State of Human Rights
in 2021 says press freedom faced the worst form of
controls in 2021, marked by attacks on journalists and
efforts to gag and control the news and social media.
Freedom House offers, In 2021, the government targeted
prominent media personalities, individual journalists,
television programs and stations, and media houses for
raising issues authorities considered unpalatable by fining
them, temporarily banning them, or withdrawing
government advertising, adding that military intelligence
agencies targeted critical journalists with violent attacks.
Paris-based Reporters Without Borders' (RSF) 2022 Press
Freedom Index ranks Pakistan 157th of 180 countries (just
below Afghanistan; the United States is 42d), down from
145th in 2021, asserting Pakistan is one of the world's
deadliest countries for journalists.
Freedom of Expression
London-based Amnesty International (AI) argues: While
some legislative progress was made [in 2021], freedom of
expression and dissent continued to be restricted through
new laws and harsher punishments. HRW claims that
Pakistani authorities routinely use draconian
counterterrorism and sedition laws to intimidate peaceful
critics. According to the 2021 HRR, there are serious
restrictions on free expression and on internet freedom,
including site blocking, in Pakistan: The government uses
a systematic, nationwide, content-monitoring and filtering
system to restrict or block 'unlawful' [internet and media]
content, including material it deems un-Islamic,
pornographic, or critical of the state or military forces.
Freedom House rates Pakistan's internet as Not Free. The
2021 HRR also asserts that Pakistan's government
interferes with academic freedom by restricting, screening,
and censoring certain cultural events based on limiting
dissemination of antistate content. Freedom House](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.crs/goveivu0001&div=1&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)