New ruling little help to female prisoners

Human rights activists in Pakistan have called for an improvement in the conditions faced by women prisoners and an overhaul of the entire justice system following an announcement by President Musharraf that conditional remissions and pardons for females in custody would be increased. "Such remissions benefit only a limited number [of female prisoners] and not to the majority in overcrowded jails in the country," Zia Ahmed Awan, an advocate and president of the NGO Lawyers for Human Rights and Legal Aid (LHRLA), told IRIN from the southern port city of Karachi. The president announced the new measures for female detainees at a convention of women councillors from around the country. Those eligible for early release include female convicts with children in jail, girls under 18 and women over 60. But the women must have served at least one-third of their sentence and not be serving time for terrorist offences or murder. According to Awan, this impacts on just a tiny minority of prisoners. "Karachi jail has only 20 women eligible under the new ruling out of a total 246 women prisoners, and none of them has yet got any benefit from this new pardon." The problem is that the majority of women and girls in custody are awaiting trial and hence not covered by the new ruling. A recent study by the Islamabad-based NGO, Sachet, indicated that only 430 women in 75 jails across the country had been convicted, while 1,297 were still awaiting trial. "There are seven convicted out of a total of 13 female prisoners, with nobody over 60 or under-18 years of age in Quetta prison, while four women are along with their children", Jail Superintendent, Zia Tareen told IRIN from the provincial capital Quetta. "If the president or government really wants to do something for women in prisons, they should pay heed to the demands of rights activists to repeal discriminatory laws introduced by then military ruler General Zia-ul-Haq, in 1979 under his politico-religious agenda", Awan added. The laws, known collectively as the Hudood Ordinance, fail to differentiate between a rape and adultery case, for example. Rape victims in Pakistan are routinely found guilty of adultery, then imprisoned and subjected to corporal punishment. According to a report by the special committee on the Hudood Ordinance, constituted by the National Commission on the Status of Women (NCSW) to repeal or amend the controversial law, 88 percent of women prisoners in the country were in jail as a result of ambiguities in the Hudoood Ordinance. "Women face too many problems in jails. Slow judicial processes and delays by police in producing the charge sheets before the courts, a lack of access to legal aid and shortage of transport to take women to courts," Kamila Hayat, joint-director of the Islamabad chapter of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP), told IRIN. She added that there was also a severe lack of women-only detention facilities in the country, making the prison experience for females humiliating and unnecessarily harsh. Human rights activists working closely with females in jail say that most women in custody are eventually acquitted when their cases eventually come to trial. "The conviction rate in women's cases is only five percent, which shows [that] they are mostly unfairly accused and often locked up for years in jails for nothing - this sort of abuse must stop." But activists accept that the new presidential ruling was an important step in the right direction. "Such remissions, though minimal in actual terms, depicts [that] there is a realisation of the gravity of problems faced by these prisoners," Hayat added. At a legislative level things also appear to be improving for women. A new women's rights bill has been moved in the National Assembly - the lower house of the parliament - which proposes a repeal of the Hudood Ordinance as well as other discriminatory laws. Another bill focusing specifically on honour-killings in the country is also likely to be moved in the assembly soon. This bill seeks to amend the laws so that those committing murder in the name of 'honour' can be more easily brought to justice.