Pakistani government pushed legislation through Parliament that would amend the country?s rape laws, which have been assailed as unfair to women.
Under the existing laws, known as the Hudood laws, a woman must produce four witnesses to prove rape. A failure to do so could result in her being charged with adultery. That stigma alone keeps many women from bringing charges against their attackers.
The Hudood laws were enacted in 1979 by the country?s last military dictator, Gen. Mohammad Zia ul-Haq.
The new legislation is subject to approval by the Senate and president, which are considered formalities. It removes rape from the jurisdiction of Islamic law, which covers matters like marriage and divorce, and makes it a crime punishable under Pakistan?s penal code.
The new legislation does away with the requirement for four male witnesses and will allow convictions to be made on the basis of forensic and circumstantial evidence.
The Hudood Ordinance (Urdu: حدود مسودہ ) is a law in Pakistan, intended to implement Muslim Shari’a law, which enforces punishments mentioned in the Quran and sunnah for a number of crimes. It was enacted in 1979 as part of then military ruler Zia-ul-Haq’s Islamization process.
The Ordinance is most criticized for criminalizing all extra-marital sex (zina), and making it exceptionally difficult and dangerous to prove an allegation of rape. A woman alleging rape is required to provide four adult male witnesses of “the act of penetration”, and if the accused man is Muslim, the witnesses must be Muslims themselves. Failure to prove rape places the woman at risk of prosecution for adultery, which does not require such strong evidence.
For married Muslims, the maximum punishment for zina is death by stoning, or for unmarried couples or non-Muslims, 100 lashes. In practise, only imprisonment has ever been enforced, because the maximum punishments require four eyewitnesses as above.
The Hudood Ordinance also criminalises drinking alcohol (punishment: 80 lashes) and theft (punishment: amputation of the right hand).
A number of international and Pakistani human rights organizations are making an effort to get the law repealed. However, they are opposed by conservative religious parties, who accuse the government of departing from Islamic values. The governments of Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif both set up commissions to investigate the Hudood Ordinance. Both commissions recommended amending certain aspects of the law, but neither government followed through. In 2006, president Musharraf again proposed reform of the Ordinance. On November 15 2006, a bill has passed in parliament that will make rape prosecutable as a civil offense, falling under civil law.