ISLAMABAD, Pakistan – Pakistan’s lower house of Parliament passed amendments to the country’s rape laws Wednesday, eliminating the death penalty for extramarital sex and revising a clause on making victims produce four witnesses to prove rape cases.
Consensual sex outside marriage remains a crime punishable by five years in prison or a $165 fine, a parliamentary official said.
International and local calls for change intensified after the 2002 gang-rape of a woman, Mukhtar Mai, who was assaulted after a tribal council in her eastern Punjab village ordered the rape as punishment for her 13-year-old brother’s alleged affair with a woman of a higher caste.
The amendments – which still must be approved by the Senate – enraged Islamic fundamentalists, but won cautious support from human rights activists, who wanted the controversial laws scrapped altogether.
President Gen. Pervez Musharraf praised lawmakers for passing the amendments and urged the government-controlled Senate to approve them within days. He also criticized Islamic fundamentalists for their “unnecessary” opposition and claims that his government was acting against Islam.
“I have taken a firm decision to change these unjust rape laws as it was necessary to amend them to protect women,” Musharraf said.
The amendments were passed by a majority of the 342-member assembly, including Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz, who said it marked “a historic day” for the country.
“Nothing is against Islam in this bill,” Aziz said, adding that the amendments were made in consultation with Islamic scholars, lawmakers and human rights activists.
Pro-Islamic lawmakers stormed out of the National Assembly on Wednesday in protest of the new legislation, known as the Protection of Women Bill.
“We reject it,” Maulana Fazlur Rahman, a top Islamist opposition leader, said after the vote, which he described as a “dark day” in Pakistan’s parliamentary history.
Rahman and other Islamists vowed to devise a strategy to block Senate passage of the bill. Islamic political groups have previously staged mass rallies to denounce moves by the military-led government deemed contrary to Islam.
Pakistan’s late military dictator, Gen. Zia ul-Haq, introduced the laws, known as the Hudood Ordinance, in 1979 to appease Islamic fundamentalist political groups.
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