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ISLAMABAD: Nearly 150 people in Pakistan have died and hundreds have been injured since late June due to heavy monsoon rains this season, disaster management authorities said on Wednesday.

The monsoon season brings South Asia up to 80 percent of its annual rainfall, arriving in early June in India and late June in Pakistan, and lasting through until September.

The annual rains are vital for agriculture and food security, and the livelihoods of millions of farmers. But they also bring with them flooding and landslides and cause buildings to collapse.

“Due to this year’s monsoon rains, 77 citizens have died and 214 have been injured,” a spokesperson for the Provincial Disaster Management Authority (PDMA) in Punjab, Pakistan’s most populous province, said in a statement. 

In the past 24 hours alone, 27 people had died and 46 more injured across the province, the statement added.

On Monday, the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) had warned of another wet spell in the country from July 15 till July 17 and said the death toll from monsoon rains and floods had reached 111 since June 26. With the fresh deaths in Punjab over the last 24 hours, that figure is nearing 150.

“Most deaths have been recorded due to roofs collapsing in dilapidated buildings and old houses,” DG PDMA said, urging citizens to avoid staying in old mud homes and to take extra precautions.

“Citizens are requested to take precautionary measures in view of the rainy season … Citizens are urged not to stay in old mud houses under any circumstances.”

On the instructions of Punjab’s chief minister, the injured are being provided “the best possible medical aid” and families of those killed will receive financial assistance under the provincial government’s policy, the agency added.

Children should be kept away from electric wires, poles, and low-lying flooded areas to prevent further casualties, the PDMA said. 

“By adopting precautionary measures, loss of life and property can be avoided.”

Pakistan, despite contributing less than one percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, is among the countries most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change.

In 2022, unprecedented monsoon flooding submerged a third of the country, affecting over 33 million people and inflicting more than $30 billion in losses, according to government estimates.

ISLAMABAD: A senior US lawmaker on Tuesday voiced concern over the human rights situation in Pakistan, saying basic freedoms were in jeopardy under the current administration and expressing alarm over the continued incarceration of former prime minister Imran Khan in a high-security prison in Rawalpindi.

The remarks by Rep. Chris Smith, Co-Chairman of the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission, during a congressional hearing in Washington on “political repression” in Pakistan. The bipartisan commission was established in 2008 by the US House of Representatives to promote and advocate for international human rights through hearings, investigations and policy recommendations.

Its latest hearing focused on Pakistan and featured testimony from several witnesses, including Zulfi Bukhari, a close aide to ex-premier Khan and a senior figure in the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party.

“Life in Pakistan today is marked by rampant government violations of basic freedoms, particularly freedom of speech and media freedom, and the denial of free and fair elections,” Smith said in his opening remarks.

“Pakistan is a country of over 250 million people — the fifth-largest country in the world — so the human cost of this repression is immense in its scope as well its severity,” he added.

Smith maintained Pakistan’s democratic crisis was not new, though he asserted the government’s human rights record had “taken a sharp turn for the worse” in recent years.

The American lawmaker pointed to the confrontation between the South Asian country’s powerful military establishment and Khan’s PTI, calling the former prime minister a “genuinely popular leader” who had challenged public corruption and military interference before being ousted in what Smith described as a “political coup” in 2022.

Smith noted that last year’s general elections were “widely seen as unfree and unfair, including by the US government, marked as they were by a ban on the PTI party, harassment of PTI officials, bans on public gatherings, a national Internet shutdown, and massive voting irregularities.”

In his testimony, Bukhari said that “Imran Khan and his wife are in solitary confinement for over 23 hours a day,” describing their conditions as “inhumane.”

He also questioned the legality of the February 2024 elections, which PTI has repeatedly alleged were rigged, and criticized the military trials of civilians that he said led to the conviction of dozens of party members and supporters.

“This is a purge,” he said. “It’s not justice.”

Toward the end of Bukhari’s statement, Smith urged the US administration to sit up and take notice of the situation in Pakistan.

He also urged the Trump administration to “redouble its commitment to democracy and human rights” in the South Asian country.