Former prime minister and PPP Chairperson, Benazir Bhutto, has said that as a nation we are still in search of the rights that God gave us and the 1973 Constitution envisaged. She said this in a message to a seminar on human rights held here on Sunday.
She said the masses are seeking the right to representation through free elections, the right to association, to travel, to dissent, to justice, to food, clothing, shelter, education and health, the bare minimum for human survival.
"I pay tribute to Mukhtaran Mai, to Dr Shazia Khalid and to all the women who had the courage to speak out against the rapists. Without their courage the even the unborn child would have faced the criminal elements".
However, elements that try to hijack Islam passed laws that protected rapists and undermined the image of the great religion of Islam. It took a quarter of a century but they were ultimately defeated as the majority came together in parliament to declare that the state would no longer spare rapists, she said. Pleading for inter-faith understanding, she said it was all the more important in a world where the choice is between the clash of civilisations and the consensus between civilisations.