ISLAMABAD - The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP), while portraying a bleak picture of the country’s law and order during the previous year, has stated that 2,307 people were killed and 4341 injured in terrorist raids including suicide and sectarian attacks while 517 people were killed in drone attacks and 337 in police encounters during 2011.
The Commission while releasing its annual report titled ‘State of Human Rights in 2011’ on Thursday said that only1715 people were killed in sudden flare-ups of violence in Karachi while 173 people abducted and murdered in Balochistan in the year 2011. The report was launched during a ceremony at a local hotel where Kamran Arif, Co-Chairman of HRCP, I.A. Rehman Commission’s Secretary General HRCP were also present.
However, the Commission has stated that state of human rights in 2011 was a mixed bag. There certainly were some positives; some things remained unchanged; and then there were the aggravations.
According to the report, 389 people were killed and 601 injured in incidents of violence targeted against various Muslim sects in 2011. More than 100 Hazara Shias were killed in targeted attacks in Balochistan and a large number were reported to be fleeing the province. At least, six Ahmedis were murdered in target killings on account of their faith while at least eight people were booked under the blasphemy law and another three were given capital punishment under the law. The Commission has verified 62 new cases of enforced disappearances, and among them 35 of these disappearances occurred in Balochistan and 20 in Sindh while dead bodies of 173 victims of such persons were recovered in Balochistan during 2011.
Similarly, the Commission says that 16 journalists were killed in the country in 2011. At least, 12 people were killed and 343 injured in police action to break up public gatherings or in attacks by non-state actors on rallies.329 political activists were killed in violence in a single city of Karachi during one year. While, over 1500 people protestors were arrested and at least 4962 people were booked on various charges following protests and sit-ins. The reports says that an overwhelming majority of the nearly 78,000 people being held in Pakistan’s prisons were under trial while 92 inmates died across the country during 2011. Various courts sentenced 313 people to death in 2011 including six women but no body was hanged in 2011 and the number of people awarded death sentence was low than in 2010.  The annual report of the Commission has said that women were barred from exercising their rights to vote in by-elections in at least two constituencies while the local government system could not be revived in 2011.
At least 943 women were killed in the name of honour of which 93 were minor while 701 women committed suicide and 428 tried to end their lives during last one year. Nearly 4500 cases of domestic violence against women were reported. During 2011, infant mortality rate was 63.3 deaths per 1000 births while the under-five mortality rate was 89 deaths per 1000 children.  Unemployment in the country during 2011 rose to 6 percent from 5.6 percent in 2009-10 however a senior official put the unemployment at 35 percent of the total workforce.
About the education sector in Pakistan, the Commission reported that at least 33 percent children were believed to be out of school and dropout rate from primary to secondary schooling was nearly 50 percent.  Regarding the health, the report states that the public health care system remained far from adequate and the 37-day doctors’ strike in Punjab followed by a strike by nurses’ contributed to people’s problems. The health budget was as low as 0.23 percent of the federal budget, the lowest in over ten years. 31,655 victims contracted the dengue virus of which 347 died during 2011 while197 polio cases were reported across the country. At least 2,131 people committed suicide and another 1,153 attempted it. During the year 2011, 1.5 million houses in Sindh and over 7000 houses in Balochistan were destroyed or damaged in the floods while 12, 279 houses were destroyed or damaged in the militancy-hit Bajur and Mohmand districts of FATA.
The number of internally displaced persons in relief camps across the country peaked at over 1.2 million people in Pakistan during last year. There were 4,70,000 displaced persons in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa at the end of the 2011, down from around 1.1 million people the previous year. Over nine million people were displaced or otherwise affected by flooding in Sindh, and over 3,50,000 in parts of Balochistan. Similarly, 365,000 people wee expected to be displaced if a military operation was launched in North Waziristan and 2 million registered Afghan refugees remained in Pakistan. The report states that the Supreme Court’s bid to clean up the administration of corrupt and irregular practices overshadowed the judicial system’s functioning in 2011.
The judiciary and the executive remained on a collision course most of the time.