Islamabad, June 24 (IANS) Several members of Pakistan's Sindh Bar Council strongly condemned the life sentences handed down to Baloch activists, including Baloch Yakjehti Committee (BYC) leader Mahrang Baloch, stating that the verdict raises serious concerns if it stems from proceedings lacking independence, fairness, due process, and the fundamental principles of justice.
The remarks came after a Pakistani Anti-Terrorism Court on Monday sentenced four activists, including Mahrang Baloch, to life imprisonment in connection with a case relating to the killing of a Frontier Corps official, local media reported.
Alongside Mahrang Baloch, the court also handed life sentences to Baloch Students Organisation (BSO) Chairman Balach Qadir, central leader Abu Bakr Kalanchi, and BYC leader Sibghatullah Shahji.
In a statement issued, the members said that the “majesty of law” does not stem from the severity of its punishments but from the integrity of the judicial process.
“Courts are not established to manufacture conformity, nor to sanctify the exercise of power; they exist to protect liberty, to restrain arbitrariness, and to uphold the dignity of the human person. When judicial institutions are perceived to be transformed from guardians of constitutional freedoms into instruments for silencing dissent, the injury inflicted is not confined to the accused alone; it strikes at the very soul of the Constitution and undermines public confidence in the administration of justice,” read the statement.
“We hold, as a matter of unwavering legal conviction and profound political morality, that dissent is not a crime, disagreement is not sedition, and the peaceful assertion of civil liberties can never be treated as an act of disloyalty to the state. The right to question authority, to advocate for justice, and to speak for the marginalized is not a concession bestowed by governments; it is an inalienable attribute of a free people and the lifeblood of constitutional democracy,” it added.
According to the statement, no society can truly claim adherence to the rule of law while prosecuting voices of conscience and criminalising dissent.
“Voices raised in defense of human dignity, civil rights, and constitutional freedoms cannot be silenced through judgments rendered by institutions that appear to have forsaken wisdom for expediency, justice for compliance, morality for convenience, and conscience for silence. Such proceedings may carry the force of authority, but they can never command the reverence that springs from fairness and moral legitimacy,” it added.
The signatories categorically rejected the “dangerous proposition” that civil rights activism constitutes a threat to the state, adding that those who peacefully advocate for human dignity, equality before the law, and constitutional freedoms are, in reality, “defenders of the highest democratic ideals.”
“To punish them for exercising these rights is not a display of the State’s strength; it is an admission of its insecurity,” they noted.
--IANS
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