ISLAMABAD, May 14: The Women’s Action Forum (WAF) renewed its commitment to continue with its struggle for repeal of the Hudood Ordinance.

They said they will not rest until success is achieved and no amount of police brutality or other repressive measures towards civil society will deter them from making their demands and exercising their fundamental human right of freedom of speech, expression and assembly.

A statement issued by WAF (Khawateen Mahaz-i-Amal) said: “The recent events surrounding the Rajm sentence in the Zafran Bibi rape case has highlighted the inherent flaws and contradictions in the Hudood Ordinance of 1979. Not only is it unjust and un-Islamic, but it is consistently, by default, applied to women only.

This reinforces the injustice inherent in the Hudood Ordinance. No civilized society could conceive of, condone or accept the equating of adultery with rape and using the occurrence of pregnancy as an “admission of guilt”.

It said: “thousands of innocent women sentenced to jail are thus doubly victimized.

“ All chapters of the WAF jointly reiterate our longstanding position, since 1981, against the existence of the Hudood Ordinance and we yet again call for its immediate repeal.

There is no further need or scope for any more judicial or legal reviews of the Hudood Ordinance by official sub-committees or commissions.

There is also no room for any amendments with it, as is currently being proposed.

In line with the recommendations of the Pakistan Commission of Inquiry on Women (1997) the only way to rectify the wrong done by the enactment of the Hudood Ordinance is simply to repeal it”.