ISLAMABAD, March 12: The Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) has expressed serious concern over the state of human rights in the country and said the US State Department’s annual report on human rights had exposed Pakistan as a country where the state of human rights deteriorated in the year 2007.

In a statement here on Wednesday, PPP information secretary Sherry Rehman said Pakistan went through political, economic and judicial turmoil last year as the country grappled with terrorism, political instability, largely resulting from a spate of unconstitutional acts of the last regime, collapse of important state institutions, food and energy shortages and judicial crisis.

Ms Rehman said the regime slapped martial law in November and fundamental human rights remained suspended for a major part of the last. She said the media also came under fire for its independent stand and faced frequent clampdowns in the form of vague ordinances, suspension of transmission and confiscation of equipment.

She said that a regime that found its way to power through unconstitutional means could only be expected to commit further violations of human rights to perpetuate its rule.

She said the nation of 160 million had been held hostage to terrorism, unconstitutional measures and suspension of human rights laws for eight years. “We had a lame parliament, a legislative system that rested on the shoulders of presidential ordinances, an over-empowered local government, an intelligence agency that is answerable to none and an unaccountable head of the state that continued providing impunity to an inefficient and corrupt prime minister and administration,” she said, adding that the people suffered at the hands of this system every single day of the last eight years. Ms Rehman said a non-representative and undemocratic political system could never be trusted to deliver on human rights. She observed that the US State Department’s report made special mention of corruption that was rampant within the government.

She said the regime had turned Balochistan and Fata into no-go areas, provided protection to extremists and allowed notorious security agency personnel a free hand to nab citizens in the name of “rule of law”.

Ms Rehman said the incoming PPP government was strongly committed to the core fundamentals of human rights entitlements.