Karachi: For the third year in a row,
authorities have appointed women cadets to guard Pakistan
founder Mohammed Ali Jinnah's mausoleum in this southern port
city.
The change of guard at Jinnah's mausoleum is done on
his birth anniversary on December 25 and this year too women
and non-Muslim cadets were posted at the venue.
Women cadets made history by assuming duty at Jinnah?s
mausoleum for the first time in 2006, during former President
Pervez Musharraf's regime.
The cadets from the Military Academy in Kukul had then
assumed duty at the mausoleum to mark Jinnah's 130th birth
anniversary.
Jinnah believed that no nation could rise to the
height of glory unless its women were given equal
opportunities.
"We are victims of evil customs. It is a crime against
humanity that our women are shut up within the four walls of
their houses as prisoners. There is no sanction anywhere for
the deplorable conditions in which our women have to live,"
Jinnah said in 1944.
The posting of women cadets at the mausoleum is seen
as a major step in a country where religious groups and
conservative elements oppose the participation of women in
mainstream society.
PTI
First Published: Sunday, December 27, 2009, 16:09