Pakistani rape victims jailed for adultery

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — The young audience fell into confused silence and then buzzed with whispers after Mir Ibrahim Rahman announced that there was no difference between an apple and an orange.

Rahman, 28, chief executive of the immensely popular Geo TV network, was speaking last Sunday at a youth conference in Rawalpindi, the garrison city adjacent to the capital, Islamabad. His absurd statement, he immediately made clear, was meant to illustrate the failings of a set of Islamic decrees known collectively as the Hadood Ordinance.

The laws, introduced in 1979 and criticized internationally since, include a clause stating that to prove rape, a woman must have at least four male witnesses. If the woman fails to provide proof, she herself faces the charge of adultery.

"The Hadood Ordinance makes no distinction between rape and adultery," Rahman explained to his audience. "It is just like saying there is no difference between an apple and an orange."

That flaw, critics say, has put many women behind bars. Of about 6,000 women in Pakistani custody awaiting trial as of March, 4,621 were being held on Hadood violations, according to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, an independent group. Some 1,300 women awaiting trial were ordered released on Friday, after Pakistan's ruler, Pervez Musharraf, allowed bail for nonviolent offenses.

Pakistani society has remained bitterly divided over the laws. Orthodox clergymen have often portrayed the laws as divine ("Hadood" refers to punishments in the Quran for adultery and fornication, as well as for consuming alcohol, making false accusations and stealing). Rights advocates have demanded repeal since the 1980s. They maintain that the Hadood Ordinance not only negates the rights of women but is also a misinterpretation of Islam.

Now, there are signs that the laws may be, at the least, softened. And Rahman — who has pressed for public debate over them in television shows, advertising campaigns and personal appearances at seminars, like the one last Sunday — may be a major reason.

Most prominently, Geo put together and broadcast four groundbreaking episodes of a program called "Zara Socieye" ("Just Think") in June, on which 27 top religious scholars debated various clauses of the Hadood Ordinance and agreed on a series of amendments.

Rahman, the son and grandson of Pakistani media magnates, studied in the United States and worked at Goldman Sachs in New York. He returned to Pakistan four years ago to lead Geo, one of more than a dozen private television channels that were founded after Musharraf liberalized media laws.

"On the flight back, I wrote a letter to myself, explaining why I am going back," Rahman recalled. One of the goals he wrote down, he said, was raising public awareness of the Hadood laws.

Last week, Musharraf asked the Council of Islamic Ideology, which advises the Legislature on whether a certain law is repugnant to Islam or not, to draft an amendment to the Hadood Ordinance.

The Law Ministry is also proposing changes.

"Now, there is a lot of consensus," Wasi Zafar, Pakistan's law minister, said Wednesday. "Many religious scholars have admitted that certain laws are required to be amended."

But he said misuse of the laws is the problem, rather than their intrinsic flaws.

"Major defect is the misuse of the law," Zafar said while acknowledging that legal experts have called it "bad legislation."

Zafar said his ministry would complete a draft of amendments this month and the government would present it in the next session of the Parliament, which is expected to be convened this month as well. A simple majority is needed to change the law.

Shahid Shamsi, a spokesman for Jamaat-e-Islami, the country's largest Islamic party, said his party was not averse to changing the Hadood Ordinance but did not support repealing it.

But some critics of the law say that only repeal will satisfy them.

"No amendment to the law will be able to make these 'black laws' acceptable to civil society," read a statement released last week by Pakistan's leading nongovernmental and rights organizations.