PPO ploy to legitimise illegalities: HRCP

The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) has said the promulgation of Protection of Pakistan (Amendment) Ordinance 2014 will violate constitutionally guaranteed rights and legitimise illegalities.
In a statement issued on Friday, the HRCP said, “There are far too many things in the PPO that rights-respecting individuals will find difficult to stomach”.
The main concerns include giving the authorities the power to withhold information regarding the location of any detainee, or grounds for such detention; detention of a person in internment centre instead of ordinary jails; creating new classifications of suspects such as “enemy alien” or “combatant enemy”; extending the preventive detention period for any suspect; and legitimising illegal detention and enforced disappearance through giving retrospective effect to the law”.
Moreover the statement says, the HRCP doubts that when the apex court had declared prolonged and unannounced detention by the security forces illegal and called for legislation, ordinances like these were what it had called for.
The statement said that citing exceptional circumstances to justify derogation of rights and for delegation of exceptional powers to the law enforcers is particularly worrisome in the context of enforced disappearances in Pakistan. The ordinance will only compound the saga of enforced disappearance in Pakistan and strengthen impunity, it said.
The statement said the HRCP hopes and expects that the glaring illegalities that the ordinance seeks to facilitate would not escape the notice of the judiciary.
It also said that the HRCP is convinced that there is no justification for promulgating an ordinance on such an important issue in the presence of Parliament, which should have been allowed to consider the controversial law.