IN 1989, Kanizan Bibi was 16 when several members of the family where she worked as a servant were murdered over a property dispute. The surviving head of the family reported his cousins for the murder. But being powerful, they bribed their way out. Somebody had to pay, Kanizan’s poor father was told by the villagers. And so, they took her to the police station.

At the station, the police hung Kanizan from a fan with ropes thicker than her wrists and beat her. They let mice loose in her pants and electrocuted her repeatedly. To stop the torture, she confessed to murders she never committed. The police also falsely wrote down her age as 25. Two years later, a trial court sentenced her to death and she spent the next 30 years of her life on death row. While imprisoned, Kanizan’s mental health severely worsened, to the point that it even worried the jail staff. Slowly, she stopped speaking altogether and was eventually diagnosed with schizophrenia. Her father, who ran from pillar to post to free his innocent daughter, passed away in 2016, while she was still in jail.

In 2008, a shot was fired in the middle of an altercation, leading to the death of a woman. Abdul Basit, a husband and a father of two, happened to be at the scene of the incident. It’s not clear who pulled the trigger. Basit maintains his innocence. But somebody had to pay. And so, the police arrested and tried Basit. A year later, he was sentenced to death.

While imprisoned, Basit was subjected to extremely inhumane and unsanitary living conditions as punishment. He fell severely ill but did not receive medical attention. Later, he went into a coma for three weeks and was eventually diagnosed with TB meningitis. A medical board concluded that he was suffering from paraplegia and long-term complications of spinal atrophy. Basit’s disability is now permanent. Still in jail, he suffers from bedsores and is incontinent. The only reason Basit is alive today is simply because prison authorities do not know how to hang a man unable to stand.

There are many examples of how the justice system fails Pakistanis.

On Nelson Mandela International Day today, it’s the right time to remember Kanizan and Basit. These are two of too many examples of how the Pakistani justice system regularly fails its citizens. Mandela Day is also the occasion to uphold the Nelson Mandela Rules, designed to protect prisoners’ rights and their fundamental human dignity.

The first Mandela Rule “prohibits subjecting prisoners to torture and other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment”. Rule 57(3) “requires for allegations of torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment of prisoners to be dealt with immediately”. Rule 25(1) “requires every prison to have a healthcare service tasked with evaluating, promoting, protecting, and improving the mental health of prisoners”. Had the Pakistani prisons, police and courts lived up to just the first rule, an innocent 16-year-old girl would not have gone through the ordeal she did.

Rule 13 states “that sleeping accommodation shall meet all requirements of health, due regard being paid to climatic conditions and particularly to cubic content of air, minimum floor space, lighting, heating, and ventilation”. Then, Rule 17 “requires all parts of the prison to be properly maintained and kept scrupulously clean”. Rule 33 “provides that the physician shall report to the prison director whenever a prisoner’s physical or mental health has been or will be injuriously affected by continued imprisonment or by any condition of imprisonment. These are just three of the several standards the prison where Basit is locked up failed to meet. The result of their negligence is in front of our eyes.

The fact is simple: reinforcing the Mandela Rules, many of which are already reflected in existing Pakistani law, would prevent another Kanizan and Basit from happening. At each and every step along the way, the two were let down by the country’s institutions.

Yet, there are grounds for optimism, which is a crucial lesson from the life of the great South African we are celebrating. Last year, the Supreme Court delivered a historic judgement to commute Kanizan’s death sentence, along with another prisoner Imdad Ali. The court’s rationale was “if a condemned prisoner, due to mental illness, is found to be unable to comprehend the rationale behind punishment, then carrying out the death sentence will not meet the ends of justice”. This landmark moment offers a flicker of hope to the scores of death-row prisoners in similar situations. But, we should not stop here. Basit still languishes in jail, in a state where punishment doesn’t make sense. Like him, there are many others behind bars whose dignity is stripped by our dysfunctional justice system. Pakistan stands judged by how it treats its prisoners.

The writer is the executive director of Justice Project Pakistan.

Published in Dawn, July 18th, 2022