KARACHI, July 3: The Joint Action Committee for Peace has expressed shock and grief over the shameful incident of gang-rape in Meerwala on June 22.
In a statement issued on Wednesday, the Joint Action Committee for Peace says that the 18-year-old girl was gang-raped as a “punishment” meted out by a tribal jury. “The jirga order the girl to march naked, in the presence of 1,000 people, from the room where four persons, including on the jurists, raped the 18-year-old girl. We demand that Jirga and Panchait system be abolished all over Pakistan and the culprits and everyone who sat in the jirga should be punished.”
The statement says: “We believe that this has gone too far. This is not a women’s issue. Every Pakistani should be ashamed of it. It is total breakdown of basic human decency and consciousness and not just the law and order. It shows how primitive and barbarous systems of so-called justice are violating the basic human values. It is high time that such practices be put aside.”
It adds that jirga and Panchait are the legacy of undemocratic and sick tribal and feudal societies which continue to discriminate against women in their most horrible forms.
“All such institutions and laws, including Hudood Ordinances and customary laws, must be abolished immediately. Because such extreme and shameful crimes like public gang-rapes are possible only when the perpetrators know that they can get away with it or they are determined to defy the state authority.
“The Joint Action Committee strongly condemns the criminal silence of the National Commission on Status of Women and women ministers in the cabinet, including Attiya Inayatullah, Shahida Jamil, Zubaida Jalal, Shaheen Atiq-u-Rehman and Anita Ghulam Ali, on the issue. We demand the resignation of the minister for interior and the governor of Punjab.”
The statement adds that the civil society organizations also urge the chief justice of Pakistan to form a commission comprising judges of the Supreme Court and senior lawyers to abolish all forms of parallel judicial systems, including jirga, Panchait, Shariat and military courts.
KARACHI, July 3: The Joint Action Committee for Peace has expressed shock and grief over the shameful incident of gang-rape in Meerwala on June 22.
