Pakistan is the fifth-most prolific executioner in the world, report says

Pakistan has become the fifth-most 'prolific' executioner in the world after China, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Iraq, according to research conducted by Justice Project Pakistan, a non-profit, human rights law firm.

Pakistan has carried out 465 death penalties over a period of 30 months, amounting to 3.5 people being executed every week, JPP said.

Statistics put up by the Lahore-based law firm contend that as many as 8,200 people are currently languishing on the death row in Pakistan.

The JPP report further says that according to its research, the use of death sentences and executions has failed to deter crime in Pakistan.

Notably, Pakistan had placed a moratorium on executions in 2008. However, it lifted the prohibition in December 2014 after the December 16, 2014 Peshawar school attack in which over 140 people including 132 children died.

The moratorium was lifted to crack down on criminals and militants, however, the JPP report claims that Pakistan wielding the death penalty has failed to lower crime or combat terrorism.

The JPP's latest figures are from the time the moratorium was lifted in December 2014 to May 2017.

According to the report, the province of Punjab leads massively in the number of executions, accounting for 83 per cent of all death penalties carried out in Pakistan. However, according to JPP, the province's murder rate dropped only a 9.7 per cent between 2015-2016.

The report goes on to pose a contrast with the province of Sindh, where JPP says murder rate fell nearly 25 per cent during the same period even though the region carried out just 18 executions compared to Punjab's 382.

The JPP report further attempts to poke holes in the argument that death penalties work as an effective deterrent to terrorism, noting that yearly trends of executions in Pakistan show that just 16 per cent of all death sentences carried out are handed out by courts dealing with cases of terrorism.

Commenting on the Project's finding, JPP's executive director Sarah Belal said that death penalties in Pakistan are increasingly being used for political purposes.

"The death penalty is not an effective tool to curb militancy and crime, as the data clearly shows, yet has been increasingly used for political gain," she said.

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