Islamabad, May 02: Death by stoning for adultery, amputation for theft, and the prospect of an adultery conviction for women who cannot prove they were raped: these are aspects of a medieval justice system that still prevails in Pakistan under its grim Hudood ordinances.
They are a series of 25 year-old Islamic laws which run parallel to the mainstream British-inherited Pakistani Penal Code.
An estimated 80 percent of women prisoners in Pakistan are in jail because they failed to prove rape charges, and found themselves locked up on adultery convictions, according to a 2004 report by the national commission on the status of
women.
Under the Hudood laws, anyone unable to prove rape, but equally unable to disprove extramarital sexual intercourse, can be convicted of adultery.
A push is underway by women's and right groups to repeal the laws.
But they are meeting stiff opposition from powerful Islamic conservatives, who see the laws as "divinely inspired" because they are based on teachings of the Koran.
MP Samia Raheel Qazi, vice-president of the hardline Islamic party Jamaat-i- Islami's Women's Commission, defends the Hudood laws as "the laws that are given in the Koran, and Allah (God) does not give humans the right to change them."
The laws were introduced in 1979 by Islamist military Dictator General Zia-ul Haq, who believed Pakistan-- the world's second largest Muslim country -- should have an Islamic justice system.
Bureau Report
