PESHAWAR, Oct 9: The participants of a dialogue held between citizens and different candidates called upon the major political parties to work to empower women and fight against the laws which treated women as a commodity.

The dialogue was organized by the Aurat Foundation at the Peshawar Press Club on Tuesday to draw the candidates’ attention to the discriminatory laws and to the political parties’ silence on the women rights.

Haji Mohammad Adeel and Usman Bilour (ANP), Shazia Tehmas Khan (PPP), Begum Inayatullah (Jamaat-i-Islami), Rukhsana Aziz and Sajid Abdullah (Tehrik-i-Insaaf) and Moazzam Butt (PML-Q) spoke.

Ms Tehmas, who is running for one of the reserved seats for women, said that for a balanced and healthy society her party believed in equal rights for women.

Haji Adeel, the ANP-PPP nominee for PF-6, said that the ANP was against the Hudood Ordinance and it had been opposing the repressive tribal and feudal laws against the women since its formation.

He said the ANP believed in the equality of women which is why, he added, there was no separate women’s wing in the ANP. The party considered the honour killing a criminal act, he said.

Mr Bilour, the ANP-PPP candidate for NA-1 Peshawar-I, said the ANP  was a secular party which believed that religion and politics should not be amalgamated.  

Sajid Abdullah, the Pakistan Tehrik-i-Insaaf candidate for NA-1, said that PTI would grant all rights to women enshrined in the Shariat. The PTI  would empower women in the economic and political fields, he added.

Begum Inayat, the Jamaat-i-Islami nominee for one of the reserved seats for women, said that Islam guaranteed basic rights to women. She alleged that some elements were harassing the women workers of the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal. No woman, she claimed, was ready to act as a polling agent which exposed the approach of the so-called secular forces towards women.

The panel for the dialogue comprised Dr Sarfaraz Khan, Shahida Perveen, Farzana Ali and Mohammad Riaz.