'In a setback for women's rights in Pakistan, the ruling party in Islamabad has caved in to religious conservatives by dropping its plans to reform rape laws.
Statutes known as the Hudood ordinances, based on sharia law, currently operate in Pakistan. They require a female rape victim to produce four male witnesses to corroborate her account, or she risks facing a new charge of adultery.
The ruling party in Islamabad, made up of a coalition of groups allied to President Pervez Musharraf, had hoped the new Protection of Women Bill would place the crime of rape within the country's secular penal code, which works in tandem with sharia.
But the government said rape would remain a crime punished by Islamic law yesterday after conservatives in an opposition group, Muttahida Majlis-I-Amal (MMA), threatened to walk out of parliament in protest if the government pushed ahead with reforms.
"If there are four witnesses it will be tried under
, if there are not, it will be tried under the penal code," said the law minister, Mohammad Wasi Zafar. "In the case of both adultery and rape, the judge will decide how to try the case." A new amended bill will now be presented to parliament on Wednesday.'
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0912-05.htm
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