KARACHI, March 5: The Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) has urged the Pakistan government to take all necessary measures to ensure that those who obstruct women from the use of their reserved seats are arrested and prosecuted.
In an email message the Hong Kong-based AHRC, which is a regional NGO monitoring and lobbying human rights issues in Asia also urged the government to take measures to ensure free and fair elections.
Taking note of Pakistani women’s fighting for their rights and groups fighting for electoral reforms and expressing frustration over the government's failure to implement laws, it referred to the threat given by a group of civil society organisations for launching a campaign for the protection of the rights of women in Sindh.
These groups have stated that they will beat up men who are found occupying seats reserved for women on public transport. Meanwhile, other groups, according to reports, have threatened that if the elections are rigged they will attack the election officers and harm anyone who tries to prevent free and fair elections, the AHRC noted.
Such protests, according to the AHRC, are mounted due to a common belief that there are highly organised attempts to rig elections and the possibility of holding proper, free and fair elections does not exist. In fact there is a common belief that the government itself is politically involved in manipulating the polls.
It called upon the Pakistan government to address the legitimate grievances of the women's groups who find that even the most basic protection made available to them by the law is not being respected.
The government must demonstrate its implementation capacity with regard to such laws; it maintained adding that when the implementation capacity is allowed to fail the question would arise about the good faith of the government itself, especially when there are doubts on the very legitimacy of the regime.
