Pakistan rejects US report on HR practices

Pakistan on Thursday categorically rejected the recently released 2023 Country Report on human rights practices issued by the US State Department.

The Foreign office said that the “contents of the report are unfair, based on inaccurate information and are completely divorced from the ground reality.”

The annual human rights assessment released earlier this week identified arbitrary killings, extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearance, torture and “cases of cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment by the government or its agents” in Pakistan last year.

The report also said the government “rarely took credible steps” to identify and punish officials who may have committed rights abuses.

In reaction, the FO said the US State Department’s annual exercises of preparing “such unsolicited reports lack objectivity and remain inherently flawed in their methodology. These reports use a domestic social lens to judge human rights in other countries in a politically biased manner.”

It added: “This year’s report is once again conspicuous by its lack of objectivity and politicization of the international human rights agenda. It clearly demonstrates double standards thus undermining the international human rights discourse.”

The FO said: “It is deeply concerning that a report purported to highlight human rights situations around the world ignores or downplays the most urgent hotspots of gross human rights violations such as in Gaza and Indian Occupied Jammu & Kashmir.”

Read more: https://www.nation.com.pk/26-Apr-2024/pakistan-rejects-us-report-on-hr-practices