DHAKA: Pakistani Rights activist Asma Jahangir has criticised the government for demonstrating “disproportionately high passion” against the execution of Salauddin Quader Chowdhury and Ali Ahsan Mojaheed.

“Why is the hanging of two Bangladeshis more important for the government than the execution of its own citizens?” asked the former president of the Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA).

The response sent a message that the government of Pakistan had extraordinary love and affection for the opposition members in Bangladesh than its citizens, Asma Jahangir told reporters at the Supreme Court on Monday.

She was reacting to the response by the Foreign Office and Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan expressing anguish and concern over the execution of Bangladesh National Party leader Salahuddin Quader Chowdhry and Ali Ahsan Mujahid of Jamaat-i-Islami.
“Equal passion, we hope, will be shown by the government” for the people on death row in Pakistan than being hanged elsewhere in the world by denying due process, she said.

Asma Jahangir said Pakistan should first take up the issue of capital punishment through unfair trials here and of those Pakistanis who were being consistently executed in Saudi Arabia and then show disproportionately high passion for the politicians of Bangladesh.

She said the government was only confirming the fact that two men were political agents and working for the cause of Pakistan. Are these two Bangladeshi more important than the people living in Pakistan, she asked. If the answer is in the affirmative, the government should also explain why and what for.

She admitted that the two politicians had been executed without affording due process, but regretted that the same right was being denied to the people facing trial in military courts on terrorism charges.

“We are against the death penalty and unfair trials whether in Pakistan, Bangladesh or elsewhere,” she said, adding that everybody knew that the trial of the two Bangladeshi politicians was flawed, but the role of Pakistan was something which was not understandable.

Source: The Express Tribune, the Dawn

BDST: 1943 HRS, NOV 24, 2015
RS/SMS