CHRI Urges Action To Ensure Protection for Asma Jahangir

CHRI Urges International Action To Ensure Protection for Asma Jahangir in Pakistan

Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative Press Statement, 06 June, 2012

Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative is gravely concerned about threats to the eminent Pakistani lawyer and human rights defender Asma Jahangir. CHRI calls on the Government of Pakistan to ensure the safety of Ms. Jahangir. We also urge the Secretary-General of the Commonwealth to take immediate notice of threats to Ms. Jahangir and take early steps to press upon the Pakistani government: to afford Ms. Jahangir every protection, urgently and thoroughly investigate such threats in a transparent manner and punish those guilty of involvement in any plans to take Ms. Jahangir’s life.

Ms. Jahangir’s public assertion of having credible information that Pakistan’s security establishment was planning to take her life is deeply disturbing. It comes in the context of her well-known positions and actions against human rights violations by Pakistan’s security agencies. Ms. Jahangir’s international reputation for integrity and long-term commitment to human rights requires that these threats be taken very seriously. Ms Jahangir’s judgement on matters such as death threats are well backed up by her vast experience in the field both as an activist and a former UN Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial Killings.

In addition to the several offices Ms Jahangir has held, she was recently a member of the Commonwealth Eminent Persons Group, set up to provide directions for Commonwealth reform. The Commonwealth should treat threats against Ms. Jahangir as a wakeup call to implement its mandate to ensure the compliance of member states with its fundamental values, which include human rights. It should begin immediately by taking the patterns of human rights violations, entrenched impunity and the derailing of the rule of law in Pakistan very seriously.

The threat faced by Ms. Jahangir is symptomatic of the long-standing human rights and democracy deficit in Pakistan. The current chain of events should move the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group (CMAG), the Commonwealth’s watchdog body, to monitor the evolving situation in Pakistan and, in particular, support actions to ensure the safety of Ms. Jahangir.

The Commonwealth Secretary-General and CMAG are expected to act early when a country begins to veer off the path of democracy and human rights. While the recent crisis in Maldives showed that the Commonwealth may take its newly reformed approach seriously, certain Commonwealth countries, such as the Gambia, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Swaziland, have not been on its radar, despite having strayed from the path of democracy and human rights.

ENDS

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