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Pakistan rethinks rape law

Pakistan's government has agreed to a compromise with hardline Islamic lawmakers over proposed changes to a law that has long made punishing rapists almost impossible, a lawmaker said.

The widely criticized Hudood Ordinance law, which is based on Islamic tenets, requires that a woman who claims to have been raped produce four witnesses.

Religious political parties have fiercely criticized an amendment to the law -- which would have dropped the four-witness requirement -- as un-Islamic.

But late on Monday, prominent lawmaker S.M. Zafar said the government had agreed to a "compromise" which would allow a victim of rape to choose between prosecuting suspects under the Islamic four-witness rule, or under Pakistan's civil penal code.

Rape would remain punishable by death.

Lawmakers were to receive a new draft of the proposed amendment bill yesterday.

"It's a compromise which doesn't make [a] difference in the substance [of the law], but [which] provides two different procedures for prosecuting a rape case," Zafar said.

Pakistan's law minister, Wasi Zafar, who is not related to the senator, said, "If a woman has four witnesses, she can file a case under the Hudood law ... [but] if she does not have witnesses, she can file a case under the penal code."

But opposition lawmaker Hafiz Hussain Ahmed called it a victory for Pakistan's coalition of six hard-line religious parties.

"Now they have acknowledged that the amendment was in conflict with the Koran," Ahmed said.

The bill had been scheduled for legislative debate on Monday.

It was postponed until today after a panel of Islamic clerics, asked by the government for their opinion, suggested the adjustments.

The ruling Muslim League party has a parliamentary majority and could easily pass the bill.

Human rights groups have long been demanding that the Hudood Ordinance be entirely repealed, as it clearly undermines women's ability to seek justice after a rape.

The ordinance was approved by a former military dictator in 1979 in a bid to "Islamize" Pakistani laws.

Last month, the government presented a bill to amend the law, proposing that rape cases be tried only in civil courts, with no four witness requirement.

But more than 60 lawmakers from the hardline coalition threatened to vacate their legislative seats, which could have forced a by-election and a political crisis for President Pervez Musharraf.
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