“The United States also needs to publicly demand the immediate and unconditional release of all peaceful demonstrators being detained in Pakistan,” Kumar added.

Meanwhile, Amnesty International Secretary-General Irene Khan said, “the military crackdown represented a direct assault on international law and human rights standards enshrined in the Constitution”.

“Measures that have been portrayed as necessary to protect Pakistan are in fact a wholesale abrogation of fundamental human rights protections and dismantle the very institutions and checks and balances that underpin the country’s stability,” Khan added.

Amnesty International called for immediate return to constitutional rule and the release of many hundreds of people detained under the current measures.

The International Bar Association, one of the world’s largest groups representing lawyers, said that the imposition of emergency rule represents a serious negation of the rule of law and has thrown the country into a greater turmoil. (ANI)