| Issue 23 Vol I, September 15, 2006 | Archive |
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Women still haunted by medieval laws
This has pushed civil life in Pakistan once again at a crossroads. For the first time in twenty-seven years the Hudood ordinances were challenged in parliament. A package of amendments were constructed and finally tabled before the National Assembly. The People's Party, Muttahida Quami Muhaz and the PML-Q were supporting this partial progressive bill Arraigned against the bill were religious hardliners like the six party alliances, Muttahida Majlis-I-Amal (MMA), and bipartisan feudals. They have succeeded in subverting the amendments that could have given some relief to ever harassed women of Pakistan. But there is a tale along side that explains the about turn of President Musharraf. As in 1979 Gen Zia-ul Haq who had just seized power through a coup d’ tat and felt the necessity of keeping the conservative mullahs and maulanas on his side, he brought in major changes to push in a hardliner religious government, far away from the modern legal system which Pakistan like India had inherited from the British. He cared too hoots for the progressive democratic opinion. He created an Islamic republic in order to perpetuate his own military dictatorship, a kind of semi barbarian rule. He was protected and helped by the Americans. Now Musharraf caught on a weak wicket after the dastardly killing of Nawab Akbar Bugti, wants peace with the religious Right and hence the volte face. Here too once again in the name fighting Talibans, the Americans would allow many Mukhtara Mai to be shamed. She had been fighting a heroic battle to get the rapists punished since 2002. She forced the government drastically to reassess women's rights in Pakistan after she dared to speak out publicly. She had been gang-raped by a number of men on the orders of a village council. The Hudood ordinances enshrined in Pakistani law in 1979 have been source of great trouble for women in Pakistan. These laws have been regularly criticised by local and international rights groups. Previous governments under Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif made feeble efforts to amend the laws but failed. It is also clear that for President Musharraf who sill is the army chief, political exigencies dictate his behaviour.
The failure of the new bill is a bitter disappointment to women's groups in Pakistan, which have campaigned against the Hudood ordinances. Most women refuse to report a rape for fear they will be treated as a criminal. Under current laws, a victim risks courting punishment if she reports a rape allegation as the Hudood ordinances criminalise all extra-marital sex. A woman who fails to prove that she was raped could then be charged with adultery under the same legislation. According to a 2002 report by the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, a woman is raped every two hours and gang raped every eight hours. However, because of social taboos, discriminatory laws and victimisation of victims by police, campaigners say that the scale of rape is almost certainly higher. For almost three decades Pakistanis have been told that the Hudood ordinances are sacred, and that those who denounce them are traitors to Allah and His Messenger. In fact the Hudood laws reflect neither the spirit of the Quranic message. Pakistani scholars assess: “After General Zia ul-Haq seized power in 1977 in Pakistan, he imposed and suspended all fundamental rights including the right to be free of discrimination on the basis of sex. He then introduced a series of laws that codified women's status as subordinate in law, including the Hudood Ordinances and the Qanun-e-Shahadat Order (Law of Evidence Order), which relegated women to inferior legal status and, in some circumstances, rendered their testimony to half the weight of a man's.” Currently, the only guaranteed way to obtain a rape conviction is if the accused confesses or there are four adult male witnesses to the act of enetration. In the 1980s, the government prosecuted hundreds of women for adultery or fornication unless they provided extraordinary conclusive proof that their "participation" in impermissible intercourse was forced; the accused rapist, on the other hand, was usually acquitted of all charges. The DAWN, a respected English daily newspaper was evidently irked by this behaviour of the rulers. It commented. “It also reflects the misogynist mindset of our politicians which determines their national priorities. Balochistan is in flames. Peace in Wazirstan is still precarious. Islamabad’s dialogue with India is on tenterhooks. But all this has receded into the background. What appears to have emerged as a major issue of national importance that is agitating the minds of our political leaders, especially those who claim to be the custodians of our faith, is the fear that the amendments in the Hudood laws and the PPC might give women the justice they have been denied since 1979.” Human Rights Watch, a New York based organisation is of the opinion that Pakistani government's proposed amendments to the Hudood Ordinances are grossly inadequate and fall far short of the reform required to end legalized discrimination and deter violence against women. There are Pakistani groups and some newspapers also upholding this assessment. Pakistan is yet to comply with its obligations under the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women, which calls on states to modify or abolish laws that discriminate against women. Pakistan must decriminalise adultery and non-marital consensual sex and adopt rules of evidence that give equal weight to testimony given by men and women. Don’t beleaguered women suffering this cruelty deserve some justice? |
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The Hudood
Ordinances criminalize adultery and non-marital sex; including rape have led
to thousands of women being imprisoned for so-called "honour" crimes. The
laws rendered most sexual assault victims unable to seek redress through the
criminal justice system, deeming them guilty of illegal sex rather than
victims of unlawful violence or abuse. A female rape victim must produce
four male witnesses to corroborate her account, or she risks facing a new
charge of adultery.