Speakers voice alarm over Covid-19 responses in South Asia

Justice Project Pakistan on Monday hosted a webinar on understanding South Asia’s response to COVID-19 in the context of prisons.

“Pakistan is working hard to ensure all lives, whether in detention or not, remain safe at all times. The Prime Minister has constituted two high-level committees to put forward recommendations on prisoners,” said Member National Assembly and Parliamentary Secretary for Law and Justice Maleeka Bokhari while addressing participants on International Prisoners Justice Day, commemorated in remembrance of Edward Nalon who took his own life in a Canadian prison on this day in 1974 after being a victim of solitary confinement and neglect.

“What we need is a shift in mindset from incarceration to other forms of non-custodial sentences, and to consider bail for under-trial prisoners accused of petty crimes.”

The spread of Covid-19 is an unprecedented global public health crisis which has emphasized the need for extraordinary measures to ensure the safety and welfare of prisoners and prison officials. Prisoners are an exceptionally vulnerable class, who risk being infected due to living in grossly overcrowded prisons in unsanitary, unhygienic conditions.

As of August 10, 2020, more than 150,000 prisoners have been infected in 97 countries across the world, with 5,000 of these in South Asian countries, according to JPP’s global tracker.

“There are some inherent problems prisons face in dealing with the Coronavirus. Overcrowding is one of them. And when we say overcrowding we don’t mean jam-packed markets of South Asia; it’s literally people on top of each other and not having enough space to even sleep,” said Divya Iyer, senior research policy advisor at Amnesty International.

Echoing her concerns, Dr Anup Surendranath who is the director of Centre of the Death Penalty in India, said people are sent to prison ‘as’ punishment and not ‘for’ punishment. “Lack of functioning facilities, manpower and resources within the legal system is a crucial point that needs to be discussed and addressed.”

The panelists addressed limitations and challenges faced by South Asian states in their response to COVID-19, legislative and policy mechanisms in place for protection of prisoners, implementation of requisite safeguards and the nexus between prison health and public health.

Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) South Asia Team Leader Christine Chung and DIG Prisons (Karachi region) Muhammad Nasir Khan also spoke on the occasion.

Sarah Belal, Executive Director of Justice Project Pakistan, said: “This pandemic has driven home the fact that prison health is public health. And to reduce the number of infections we have to reduce the intake of prisoners. We often view prisons as fortified blocks where nothing gets in or goes out. But in reality the virus has exposed not only prisoners but also prison staff and their families, who often live inside the jail premises.”