Roving Periscope: Now, Pakistan’s Punjab to impose ‘emergency’ over rape incidents!
Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: Pakistan’s sinking economy is going the Sri Lanka way. Global terror-funding watchdog Financial Action Task Force (FATF) has not taken Islamabad off the grey list. The fate of the USD 60 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) remains uncertain. Baluchistan is threatening to secede. And Pakistan, the global terror nursery, no longer cares about being dubbed a rogue nation, a failing state, or a basket case.
Amid these indicators of the South Asian country’s looming collapse, Pakistan’s most populated Punjab province will impose an “emergency” because of a rapid increase of cases of sexual abuse against women and children, the media reported on Wednesday.
The province reported over 22,000 rape cases in the last six years. The Punjab Information Commission said, between January and April 2022, it reported over 2,500 rape cases.
Punjab Home Minister Atta Tarar told a news conference that an increase in such incidents was a severe issue for society and government officials.
He also urged the parents to protect their children.
“Four to five cases of rape are being reported daily in Punjab because of which the government is considering special measures to deal with cases of sexual harassment, abuse, and coercion,” Geo News quoted him as saying.
“To deal with rape cases, the administration will impose an emergency,” he said.
Civil society, women’s rights organizations, teachers, and attorneys would be consulted. Besides this, he urged parents to teach their children the importance of safety. Now is the time for parents to learn how to protect their children.
Tarar said they had detained the accused in several cases. The government had launched an anti-rape campaign, and they would warn students about harassment in schools.
The government will raise the number of DNA samples on a fast-track basis to bring the culprits to justice. “We will implement a system on abuse in two weeks, to reduce the incidents,” he added.
Pakistan has been suffering from and battling a gender violence epidemic, and violence against women cuts across classes in the country.
It ranks 153 among 156 countries, just above Iraq, Yemen, and Afghanistan, according to the Global Gender Gap Index 2021 rankings.
According to the International Forum for Rights and Security (IFFRAS), Pakistan reported 14,456 women during the last four years, with Punjab topping the list.
Besides this, women’s harassment in the workplace, domestic violence against women, and other discriminatory activities against women are also rampant.
“The 5,048 cases of workplace harassment of women and violence against women reported in the country during 2018 followed by 4,751 cases in 2019; 4,276 cases in 2020 and 2,078 cases in 2021,” the Human Rights Ministry said.
IFFRAS said overlapping legal systems punctured with loopholes and a deeply engrained patriarchy in the society combine to ensure women survivors of violence are improbable to get justice as per the opinion of human rights activists, lawyers, and survivors.
“The whole process from the moment a crime is committed against a woman to registering it with the police — and then the court procedure — is structured in such a way that justice remains elusive,” Nayab Gohar Jan, a prominent rights activist, stated in May 2022.
