PESHAWAR, Aug 6: Speakers at a seminar have claimed that  more than 70 per cent women are facing different kinds of  domestic violence.

The seminar on awareness raising against domestic violence was jointly organised by the Paradise and GTZ, both NGOs, here at the Peshawar Press Club on Tuesday.

Sher Mohammad Khan, director of Paradise spoke on the domestic violence and its impact on the family. He underlined the need for raising awareness and educating people to discourage this menace, destroying normal family life.

Shazia Niaz Baig, explained the concept of domestic  violence, types  and data analysis. She said in most parts of the  country, women were considered second-grade citizens, not a partner of life.

She  said the gender discrimination had become a way  of  life and  women were burdened with all sorts of violence and  contempt that   was  contrary  to  the  basic  human  rights.  The   equal opportunities were essential for the development and progress  of the women, she added.

Dilating upon various forms of violence, she said putting curbs on basic human rights paved way for violence on women. “When women are denied of their rights like respectable way of  living, expression and movement, it is defined as violence,” she added.

Miss  Baig said women were forced to undergo various forms  of domestic  violence; including, physical, psychological or  mental and sexual. And the last one when they were treated like saleable commodities and went from hand to another hand, she added.

The physical violence, she said, included; limb-chopping, acid throwing, beating and killing. Taunting, hurling accusations  and treating as inferior changed their psyche, she added.

Quoting Human Watch Report, 1999, she said, from 70 to 90  per cent women had been target of one or the other sort of  violence. They were burnt with fire and acid and deprived of their limbs on the one or the other pretext, she added. In Lahore,  17 women were burnt to death and 265 were killed in various domestic disputes in 1997, she added.

She said honour-killing is the easiest way to kill a woman  in parts of Sindh and Balochistan. According to the  Sindh government: “Every year, 300 women become victims of this terrible traditions,” she added.

From January to April this year, she said, 629 women were  killed, 352  were wounded, 100 were tortured and 37 were beaten alone  in Sindh. According to a recent report, 211 women had  been killed in the name of honour-killing in Sindh (123), Punjab (59), Balochistan (17) and NWFP (12), she added.

She said the violence against women had roots in the ignorance and  tribal customs. “It will take time to root it out.  Education is the only solution to it,” she added.

Dr Dost Mohammad, a teacher at the Islamic Centre, University of Peshawar, rejected the domestic violence against women in  the light of religious teachings. He said Islam had granted all basic human  rights to the women, which they had not been  enjoying  in the pre-Islamic era, he added.

He said a woman had three different roles — mother, wife  and daughter — which she performed at three different stages of  her life. The woman being a wife had the only duty of bringing up the children and she was not a slave to do everything, he added.

He said a husband could not force his wife to prepare food for him or to wash his clothes. These all duties were a carry-over of the tribal-cum-feudal society, wherein the women were  considered as property.

Salma Gul of the International Labour Organisation also spoke.