South Asia Center Nonresident Senior Fellow Claude Rakisits writes for Rule of Law Updates and Perspectives on the reinstatement of the death penalty in Pakistan:

Executioners have been working overtime in Pakistan since the government in Islamabad decided on 17 December 2014 to lift the six-year moratorium on the death penalty which had been put in place by the previous civilian government. This decision cam in the wake of a deadly terrorist act in Peshawar in the same month in which more than 150 people, overwhelmingly children, were killed. As of May, 131 people had already gone to the gallows, a rate of one execution every two days since the lifting of the moratorium. 

Initially, the death penalty was limited to those convicted of terrorist acts. However, on 10 March Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s government decided to extend the capital punishment to include all prisoners on death row whos appeals had been rejected. There are more than 8,000 death-row prisoners in the country, making Pakistan one of the world’s largest populations of prisoners facing execution. 

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Related Experts: Claude Rakisits