ISLAMABAD: The Lahore High Court (LHC) ruled on Monday that a petition seeking to stop this year’s International Women’s Day march was inadmissible, dismissing the plea. 

The Aurat March — Urdu for “women’s march” — began in 2018 as a single march for International Women’s Day held in Karachi, but has become an annual event held in multiple cities. As the size and scale of the marches has grown, so has opposition by religious conservatives as well as threats of murder and rape for organizers, along with accusations that they receive Western funding as part of a plot to promote obscenity in Pakistan. The organizers deny this, saying the march is locally funded, with grassroots participation. 

In Pakistan the threats of violence are not hollow. About 500 women are killed each year by family members who believe their honor has been damaged, according to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan.

“Aurat March cards and banners are not acceptable in an Islamic society,” the petition filed by a citizen called Azam Butt said, naming Lahore Deputy Commissioner (DC) Rafia Hyder and others as a party in his plea. 

Butt said Aurat March should be canceled for being anti-Islamic but the plea was dismissed by Justice Shahid Karim.

The success of the march have made it a polarizing event in Pakistan, even as it advances the possibilities of women’s activism in the Muslim-majority nation.

In the past, opposition to the march has included accusations that the marchers were using blasphemous slogans — a crime punishable by death in Pakistan, accusations of which have provoked lynchings and murders in the past. The Pakistani Taliban have ominously warned the marchers to “fix their ways.”

The theme of this year’s Aurat march is “Siyasat, Muzahamat aur Azadi” (Politics, resistance, and independence), with a focus on electoral politics and putting oppressed groups and communities on the margins at the center-stage of politics.