PAKISTAN PERSPECTIVE

Islamabad covers the decision with a brevity that is itself an editorial statement. Dawn's article runs to 300 words, factual, hitting the key points: 13 executions in Trump's final six months (more than any president in 120 years), 37 sentences commuted by Biden, five states authorizing firing squads, the UN denouncing nitrogen hypoxia as cruel.

But what Dawn doesn't say is the most instructive part. Pakistan carries out executions -- it's one of the few democratic countries that does so regularly, with 73 executions in 2023 according to Amnesty International. Dawn makes no mention of Pakistani practice, draws no comparison, asks no questions about the coherence of covering American capital punishment without mentioning its own country's.

This silence is structural: Pakistan's English-language press, aimed at a liberal educated readership, covers the American death penalty as a foreign policy story without ever connecting it to the domestic debate. Dawn knows its readers view the United States with the same critical eye as The Guardian -- but without the discomfort of having to address Pakistan's own 73 hangings the previous year.