Senator Mushahid Hussain Syed has categorically stated that a new Ordinance replacing Hudood Ordinance would be enforced by August 31, 2006. While addressing a seminar "Repeal the Hudood Ordinance" organised by Action Aid International, Islamabad here on Wednesday, he said that all unjust laws must be changed.
He said, 74 percent Pakistanis believe that Hudood Ordinance is discriminatory and it should be changed suggesting that NGOs should lobby with the parliamentarians to make their campaign effective, for repeal of Hudood Ordinance.
The seminar was addressed by human activist and lawyer Hina Jilani, MNA (PML) Mehnaz Rafi, human rights activist and lawyer, Awami National Party (ANP), Haji Adeel, representative PPP, Fauzia Wahab, Aurat Foundation, Naeem Mirza and Action Aid Farzana Bari.
The speakers forcefully advocated that Hudood Ordinances be repealed totally. They are the product of political and not a religious movement. Pakistan army and the clerics had initiated this ordinance as a divine law during the late General Zia-ul-Haq's rule, which has nothing to do with Islam, rather it has brought bad name to Islam. It is a complete violation of justice, they claimed.
Mushahid Hussain Syed told the seminar that the government is seriously considering the issue and the result is likely to come latest by August 31. The Council of Islamic Ideology (CII) has taken a decision for repeal of the Hudood Ordinance. Majority of the members of Council voted in favour of the repeal, he added.
He quoted a saying of Hazrat Ali, "un-Islamic system can endure but injustice cannot".
Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) leader Kanwar Khalid Yunus said that Hudood Ordinance was introduced to gain financial benefits from Saudi Arabia, where this system exists. The government virtually in the shape of Hudood Ordinance sold out Pakistani women for pleasing the Saudi government to receive heavy financial gains. According to him, only two out of 57 Muslim countries have applied Hudood laws asking if the rest of Muslim countries were un-Islamic.
Hina Jilani said that most of the clauses of Hudood Ordinance are wrong. There are 20 clauses in this law out of which 16 are objectionable and unjust, claiming that the law is full of flaws, it could not be amended but the remedy is repeal, she deplored.
She further said the Hudood Ordinance is not according to Islamic Shariat and does not fulfil the requirements in case of witnesses and does not differentiate between rape and mutual understanding. She quoted an example of young boy and girl well below 10, faced trial in 1980 under Hudood Ordinance and the court was helpless to defend them under the law.
The law has discriminatory clauses and affects women badly. She blamed the then government for enacting the law deliberately to achieve its political motives and has made the society suffer.
She strongly condemned the Council of Islamic Ideology which she said has done nothing on this Ordinance so far and praised National Commission on the Status of Women (NCSW) for highlighting the issue and has pressurised the government to repeal it.
She said NCSW 2003 set up by different governments have unambiguously recommended the repeal of the Hudood Laws and discriminatory laws. The laws, which are violative of the Constitution and international commitments made by the country as signatory to CEDAW and the Beijing Platform of Action, have devastated thousands of women, mostly belonging to the poor strata of the society.
The parliament is the sole body that has the authority to legislate. Being full of loopholes and lacunae, the Hudood laws, the qisas and diyat laws and the law of evidence, she asserted, are the product of an illegitimate political process.
Haji Adeel also strongly demanded to repeal the ordinance. Speaking on the involvement of political leaders in the assembly, he said that parliamentarians should have the right to formulate laws but feared that there are very few genuine representatives of the people in the parliament and claimed that most of them are not genuinely elected.