The Justice Project Pakistan (JPP) in collaboration with Olomopolo Media organized “Limbo – A Dramatic Reading Of Letters of Prisoners on Death Row,” to mark the “World Day Against Death Penalty”.
The stage drama, held late evening on Monday at the Pakistan National Council of Arts (PNCA), featured renowned artists Sarmad Khoosat, Samiya Mumtaz, Erfan Khoosat, and Hassan Wajid Baig as they read letters penned by inmates incarcerated in jails. The letters were interspersed with passages from George Orwell’s essay, ‘A Hanging’, as well as regulations from the Pakistan Prisons Rules.
After the performance, during an interactive session, the story of a woman thrown into the intricate web of Pakistan’s criminal justice system after her husband’s arrest was also discussed.
EU’s Chargé d’Affaires Thomas Seiler said: “This event is important because it humanizes convicts on death row: members of our society who we so often think of as mere statistics, as outcasts who no longer belong to this world,” stated Mr. Seiler.
JPP’s Executive Director Sarah Belal stressed that “these are stories of real people, of JPP’s clients, who have spent decades in a death cell, in despair and hopelessness. We tell these stories to remember. We remember the poor and marginalized whom society has forgotten and condemned. We tell their stories to honor their memory, remember their humanity and remind society of the consequences of sentencing someone to death – someone who might or might not have done something wrong at a point in their lives.”
The dramatic readings highlighted lacunas in Pakistan’s justice system – torture, false confessions, juvenile detention – and shed ight on the humanity of those behind bars. With this production, JPP and Olomopolo Media raised important questions around crime, punishment and the justice system.
