HYDERABAD: Civil society activists at a meeting of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) held here on Friday expressed concern over issues of human rights violations in Sindh and observed that cases of harassment and sexual assault against women and girls were continuing endlessly.

The meeting was chaired by HRCP coordinator Imdad Chandio and attended by Haseen Musarrat Shah, Ghufrana Arain, Mahesh Kumar, Lala Haleem, Wazir Lakho, Bilal Naghar, Irshad Channa and others.

The speakers said that rights violations had become the order of the day in the province. Due to [wrongdoings by] the feudal and bureaucrat class, the country could not be included in the list of countries that respected human rights, they noted. They said that it was state’s responsibility to ensure people get human rights.

They said no civilised society endorsed rights violation but minor girls were falling prey to criminal assault. “Our society considers the Constitution and society as separate entities,” they pointed out, and said that every individual here must have social and political rights.

The activists said there were several rights-based laws on the statute book but they were never implemented.

They said the recent Kashmore incident in which a minor girl and her mother had been subjected to criminal assault had left a scar on society. The mother, they claimed, was sold for Rs20,000. They called for justice to the woman and her minor daughter and demanded that their tormentors be brought to book. They appreciated a Kashmore police ASI’s service of volunteering his wife and daughter to act as decoy which greatly helped police to arrest the main suspect.

The meeting expressed concern over incidents of violence against women, and said that when women raised their voice against such excesses, they faced different allegations and character assassination. They said that police would not accept their FIRs by telling them that the complaints were their “personal matter”.

The speakers at the meeting said that anti-harassment cells were not established at educational institutions with the result that incidents of harassment of women and girls there were being reported. The cells established at some of the institutions were not working properly, they added.

They observed that women were not safe even in Darul Aman, where they were harassed. Complaints of these women were also not registered.

The society, they said, needed an awareness campaign on human rights issues.

They called for reopening of human rights cells at civil courts of Sindh and launching a campaign for the cause.

They said the UN Declaration on Human Rights should be displayed at every roundabout and roads across Pakistan so that people could unders­tand them.

Published in Dawn, November 14th, 2020