LAHORE, May 3: The Human Right Commission of Pakistan condemned on Friday the baton charge of activists protesting against discriminatory laws against women in Islamabad on Thursday.

A statement issued by its president Afrasiab Khattak and secretary-general Hina Jilani said the incident took to a new level the measures to repress people seeking to draw attention to the violations of rights. It said peaceful demonstrators, most of them women, were trying only to draw attention to the plight of Zafran Bibi, sentenced by a court to death by stoning. In no way they represented even a marginal threat to law and order.

The HRCP claimed that there was a pattern of violent repression of those demanding civil rights. Teachers, lawyers, students, kutcha abadi dwellers and human rights activists had all faced severe action aimed at preventing them from even bringing their concerns before the public.

Refusing the citizens even the right to call attention to the issues they confront on a day-to-day basis, the HRCP leaders said, could only worsen the air of oppression already prevailing in the country. The police action in the federal capital, they said, was a reminder of the times when women activists demanding a repeal of discriminatory laws were beaten and subjected to severe maltreatment during Ziaul Haq days. The latest measures by the authorities suggested that the current regime, too, was as determined to crush those engaged in a struggle to secure basic rights. This augured ill for the future, the HRCP said.

It condemned the action taken to prevent the activists from assembling to express their distress over the plight of women in the country and the continuing presence of laws that discriminated against them. It warned that such policies could only aggravate the tensions already prevailing within the society and place under further threat the fundamental rights of citizens.