Veiled women protest Pakistan rape law amendments
Hundreds of female supporters of Pakistan’s largest Islamic group protested today against government amendments to controversial rape laws.
Some 800 women, many wearing veils, attended the rally in a downtown district of the capital, Islamabad.
They were supporters Jamaat-e-Islami, a militant-linked Islamic charity.
Last Wednesday, parliament’s lower house passed the Protection of Women Bill to amend clauses in the 1979 Hudood Ordinance, a move that enraged hard-line Islamic lawmakers.
“Un-Islamic laws are unacceptable in an Islamic country,” today’s protesters chanted.
Jamaat-e-Islami chief, politician Qazi Hussain Ahmed, told protesters the amendments will create a “free-sex atmosphere” in Pakistan.
The new law, which is expected to be backed by the government-controlled Senate, drops the death sentence for sex outside marriage and empowers a judge to try a rape case under the country’s criminal laws.
Under the Hudood Ordinance, rape cases were tried by Islamic courts where victims had to produce four witnesses to the alleged crime.
