This is apropos a Business Recorder news item “Pair sentenced to death over motorway gang rape” carried by the newspaper on Sunday. According to it, an anti-terrorism court in Lahore sentenced two men to death over the gang rape of a French-Pakistani mother. The woman was reportedly attacked in September last year in front of her small children on the side of a motorway after her car run out of fuel near Lahore.

That gang rape had received universal condemnation. It is important to note that violence against women is not a women’s issue but a human rights issue. The incidents of rape and gang-rape require a government-society response that is clearly aimed at promoting and protecting the safety of girls and women across the country. It is, therefore, important that national condemnation must always be strong, wide and unified in response to such or similar heinous acts.

Zubeida Hasan (Lahore)

Copyright Business Recorder, 2021