ISLAMABAD, 6 September 2003 — About 100 women activists demonstrated in Islamabad yesterday against the repeal of the Islamic Hudood law which is considered by some as oppressive to women.
They assembled outside the Parliament building and condemned the Commission on the Status of Women for recommending the repeal of the law which provides for cutting off hands for stealing and whipping or stoning to death for fornication.
Commission chair Majida Rizvi, a former high court judge, is under attack from both official and unofficial religious bodies for calling for the draft and debate of a new law by the Parliament.
Several male and female members of Parliament from the Islamic opposition and the liberal ruling coalition parties joined the protesters in support of their argument that the commission’s mandate was to recommend amendments in the law, not its repeal.
“It is Qur’anic law. It would be against Islam to repeal it,” the ruling coalition’s Attiya Enayatullah told reporters.
She had served under Gen. Zia-ul Haq who decreed the law in 1979 in his mission to Islamize the Pakistani society.
MP Liaquat Baloch of the Jamaat-e-Islami party, which actively supported and promoted Zia’s controversial mission, alleged “the secularist forces” in the country wanted the law repealed in their efforts to counter moves for establishing Islamic order in Pakistan.
An editorial in the country’s liberal newspaper Dawn said the number of female prisoners in Pakistan’s jails suddenly shot up in the years following the introduction of Hudood law.
More than half of them were in prison on the charge of “zina” (illegal sex), the editorial said. Rapists often escape punishment as it requires a female victim to produce four eyewitnesses to her ordeal.
