Pak rape victims risk imprisonment

About 90 per cent of Pakistan's rape victims who seek justice end up in prison because they failed to present credible witnesses as required under the laws there.

A recent US state department human rights report, quoting the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, says the "Hadood Ordinances" require presenting male Muslim witnesses in court. The ordinance, promulgated in 1979, also states that marital rape is not a crime.

Rather than risk imprisonment they cannot prove the charge of rape, less than a third of the victims inform the police. Most are pushed to drop charges because of the threat of Hadood adultery charges.

The report says that in Hadood cases, a woman or a non-Muslim witness is not accepted. So if a woman is raped before several women, or people from another community, the rapist cannot be convicted.

Things aren't much better in the homes, according to the report. Though an estimated 80 per cent of women in Pakistan are victims of domestic violence, the police rarely investigates. Even in cases where a woman dies of burns - apparently caused during cooking - the police do not visit the spot though the woman could have been killed for dowry or because she was suspected of infidelity.

While abusive spouses may be charged for assault, cases are rarely filed. Police usually return battered wives to their abusive husbands.

Women are reluctant to file charges because of societal mores that stigmatise divorce and make women economically and psychologically dependent on their husbands and male relatives. Relatives are also reluctant to report cases of abuse to preserve the family's reputation.

All extra-marital sexual relations are considered violations of the Hadood ordinances. But nowadays the government brings fewer charges against women under the ordinances and the courts are more lenient in their sentences and in the granting of bail, according to an HRCP lawyer.

The Hadood Ordinances virtually justify marital rape. It is a common practice in Paksitan that Nikah (Marriage registration) is performed whereas Rukhsati (consumption of marriage) takes place some years later.

The Nikah is also regarded as a formal marital relationship. According to the report, in one case, a 13-year-old, whose Nikah had been performed but Rukhsati had not taken place, decided to divorce her husband. The husband kidnapped the girl, raped her and then released her. The police refused to register a rape case arguing that they were a married couple.

In 1996, in the 33 days between May 11 and June 13, 212 cases of violence against women were reported in the newspapers: 61 women were killed by husbands, in laws, relatives or criminals; 46 were burned, nine of them fatally; 67 women were reported kidnapped and most of them are still missing; and 28 women, including some young girls were reportedly gang-raped. Several of these women subsequently died from shock or as a result of torture. There were also reports of in-laws burning their daughters-in-law with boiling water or oil, acid or fire.

In some incidents, parents killed daughters to prevent love marriages, while in another incident a man disfigured a woman, throwing acid on her face for refusing to marry him. A woman was badly beaten by her husband becasuse she insisted on working. In very few of these cases do the police or courts become involved, and it is rare for the perpetrator of domestic rape or murder to be convicted.

A woman could be charged with adultery if her former spouse were to deny having divorced her. There were several reports in 1996 of parents marrying their daughters off to elderly men for financial gains. Reports of feudal landlords raping peasant women also continued to appear in the press.

Scores of men and women from Baluchistan and rural areas of Sindh and Punjab provinces are killed annually for alleged illicit sexual relations. While the tradition of such killing applies equally to offending men and women, women are more likely to be killed than men. Discrimination against women is particularly acute in rural areas.

In general, female children are less valued and cared for than male children. According to a United Nations study, girls receive less nourishment, healthcare and education than boys.

There are also limits on the admissibility and value of women's testimony in court.

According to the government, only 23.5 per cent of females over ten years of age are literate, compared with 48.9 per cent of males. The level of literacy among females is declining.

Human rights monitors and women's groups believe that the Shariat law has had a harmful effect on the rights of women and minorities, reinforcing popular attitudes and perceptions and contributing to an atmosphere in which discriminatory treatment of women and non-Muslims is more readily accepted.

Both civil and religious law protect women's rights in cases of divorce, but as in the case of inheritance laws, many women are ignorant of them and often the laws are no observed. In inheritance cases women generally do not receive -- or are pressed to surrender -- their due share.

In rural areas, the practice of a woman 'marrying the Koran' is still widely accepted if the family cannot arrange a suitable marriage or wants to keep the family wealth intact.

A woman 'married to Koran' is forbidden to have any contact with males over 14 years of age, including her immediate family members.

In 1992 the Supreme Court observed that under Islamic law, a husband is not required to give written notice of a divorce to a local union council. The husband's statement, with or without witnesses, is the defining legal step. The woman, lacking written proof of divorce, remains legally and socially vulnerable.