ISLAMABAD: The Senate Standing Committee on Interior passed a bill with majority vote on Thursday which favored public hangings of rapists, though the representative of a leading political party opposed the move by arguing it would lead to “further brutalization of society.”
Pakistan has witnessed shocking incidents of sexual violence against women and children in the past which caused huge public outrage and intensified demand for harsher punishments for the perpetrators of such crimes.
In September 2020, a woman driving on the motorway ran out of fuel and was subjected to gang rape by two people in front of her children in the country’s eastern Punjab province. The incident grabbed international headlines and prompted former prime minister Imran Khan to call for chemical castration of individuals involved brutal sexual assaults.
According to Pakistan’s Dawn newspaper, the bill seeking the public hangings was moved by Senator Mushtaq Ahmed of Jamaat-i-Islami (JI) party and was also resisted by the country’s ministries of interior and foreign affairs.
“I strongly opposed public hangings being introduced in a bill in Senate Interior Committee by JI colleague Sen Mushtaq,” said Senator Sherry Rehman of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) on a social media platform. “There is no proven link between deterrence & public executions, let alone death penalty.”
“Sorry to see others arguing for a further brutalization of society,” she added. “[Former military ruler General] Ziaul Haq introduced public punishments, what did that do? Rape and human rights crimes went up and have been going up ever since. The PPP opposes such laws.”
According to the Karachi-based War on Rape group, less than three percent of sexual assault or rape cases result in a conviction in Pakistan where women rarely speak out after violent sexual assaults, fearing the shame it will bring on them and their families in the conservative Muslim country.
Those who opposed the bill advocated life sentence for perpetrators of the crime.
They also pointed out that developed societies had largely ended capital punishment even in murder cases.
