Dec 4, 2006

Pakistani legislators amend rape laws

Pakistan's parliament voted in favour of making it easier for rape victims to seek redress by curbing Islamic laws that discriminate harshly against women.

President Pervez Musharraf went on national television to praise changes he said would protect women. The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan has estimated that there is a rape in the country every two hours and a gang rape every eight hours.

Under previous law, adultery and non-marital consensual sex was criminalized. A rape victim was liable to prosecution for adultery if she could not produce four male witnesses to the assault. Under these ordinances, women have been routinely jailed for adultery on flimsy evidence, often when a former husband refused to recognize a divorce, and the legislation led to thousands of women being imprisoned for so-called honour crimes.

Pakistan's treatment of women exploded into the open with international publicity about the 2002 gang rape of a woman who was assaulted after a tribal council in her village ordered the rape as punishment for her 13 year old brother's alleged affair with a woman of a higher caste.

Under the changes, judges would be allowed to try rape cases in criminal rather than Islamic courts. That would do away with the need for male witnesses and would allow convictions to be made on the basis of forensic and circumstantial evidence.

The bill however still criminalizes premarital sex which is punishable by five years in prison.

Posted in: World Affairs