Women prisoners in Pakistan freed under an amendment to a controversial Islamic law began to be released over the weekend.
President General Pervez Musharraf amended the law, which has been on the statute book since 1979, on Friday. The change means women convicted of adultery or sex outside marriage can be released on bail rather than having to serve prison sentences.
The long-awaited amendment to the Hudood Ordinance would affect thousands of female prisoners, Pakistan’s Minister for Women’s Affairs, Sumaira Malik, told journalists in the capital, Islamabad.
“President Musharraf has taken a bold decision to protect the rights of women and save them from the misuse of Islamic laws,” Malik said. More than 1,300 women left a number of penal institutions on Saturday as a result of the change in the law.
Under the Hudood Ordinance – passed under the military dictatorship of the late General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq – women could be sentenced to death if found guilty of having sex outside marriage. The ordinance did not allow for women to be released on bail and specified a mandatory prison sentence for such offences.
Currently some 6,500 women are incarcerated in Pakistan awaiting trial on Hudood Ordinance charges, which critics say are blatantly discriminatory against women.
Great news, via Feministing.
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Is the original anti-adultery law only applicable to women, or is the amendment releasing the prisoners only applicable to women, or do both apply to everyone (but the article just talks about women)?
The article’s ambiguous, and I haven’t been able to work it out.
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