Pakistan To Consider Changing Rape Laws
Shaveta Bansal - All Headline News Staff Writer Islamabad, Pakistan (AHN) - A senior Pakistani lawmaker on Tuesday said that the government was mulling over an amendment that will remove the burden of proof placed on victims and will also protect them from retaliatory adultery charges. If passed the law will be a landmark change in the direction of development of women in the Islamic country. Mahnaz Rafi, chairwoman for Parliament's special committee for women's development, told The AP that the draft amendment will likely be submitted soon to the National Assembly, or lower house of Parliament. "This will be a historic change and it will end decades of miseries for women," she said. Under the Islamic law adopted by Pakistan in 1979, a woman who claims to be a victim of rape must produce four Muslim witnesses to prove her stance, and if she fails to do so she can then be arrested and convicted of adultery or for having sex outside marriage. The Islamic, or Shariah, law orates that such women be sentenced to death by stoning if found guilty of having sex outside of marriage, although the usual sentence is life in prison. The proposed amendments will require the person, who accuses a woman of committing adultery, to come up with four witnesses in a common law court, Rafi said. Pakistan has two parallel and sometimes overlapping legal systems: one based on British common law and another based on Islamic law. |
