Pak failing on human rights front- HRCP

A new report released by the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) has again severely criticized the country's human rights record over the past year.

The HRCP report card, according to the Pakistan Today web site, has maintained that people continue to disappear in Pakistan, sometimes because they criticize the country's powerful military or for advocating better relations with India.

The HRCP also indicates that the blasphemy law continues to be misused, especially against dissidents.

The 296-page report says deaths linked to terrorism declined in 2017, but adds that attacks against Pakistan's minorities were rising.

"Freedom of expression and freedom of association is under attack, except for those who carry the religious banner," HRCP spokesman I A Rehman, was quoted, as saying at the release of the report on Monday (April 16).

It was critical of religious conservative organisations resisting laws aimed at curbing violence against women, laws giving greater rights to women and removing legal restrictions on social exchanges between sexes.

Religious minorities in Pakistan continue to be a target of extremists, it said.

Last year, a government-mandated commission on enforced disappearances received 868 new cases, more than in two previous years, the report said. The commission located 555 of the disappeared but the remaining 313 are still missing.

"Journalists and bloggers continue to sustain threats, attacks and abductions and blasphemy law serves to coerce people into silence," the report said.