ISLAMABAD: The Senators from both sides of aisle strongly condemned the recent incidents of honor killings and called for proper legislative against incidents of setting ablaze women on Thursday.
Senate Chairman Mian Raza Rabbani suspended the proceedings of the House for five minutes to express solidarity with the victims. He also referred the issue to the Functional Human Rights committee of the House to make legislation for curbing such heinous crime. Speaking in the House, leader of the House Raja Zafarul Haq said that Islam also forbad setting ablaze any human being. Unfortunately many such tragic incidents occurred but few of them were reported, he added. He stressed the need to sensitize the people about this menace.
He said that law regarding violence against women should further be strengthened to stop reoccurrence of such tragic incidents. Leader of the Opposition Aitzaz Ahasn said that our society was going towards degradation. There was no importance of individual rather priority was being given to a family, he added. He also said that people were exploring the world and had reached moon while we were living in Stone Age and facing incidents of burning women alive. He added that laws should be introduced which could help stop pardoning the killers of honor killings. He also called for passage of anti-honor killing bill from the joint sitting of the parliament.
Farhatullah Babar of Pakisatn Peoples’ Party (PPP) said that there was a need to broaden the scope of anti-honor killing bill and such clauses should be added to the bill which could help curb burning of women alive. Sherry Rehman of PPP said that such issues should be investigated through women ombudsmen offices located in the provinces. She also said that women were still punished through Jirga system and that the Parliament should play its role in this regard.
Other leaders including Dr Jahanzeb Jamal dini, Talah Mehmood, Nuzhat Sadiq,Karim Khawaja, Salim Zia and Gen (R ) Salahuddin Trimizi also underlined the need for making effective measures to put an end violence against women specially burning them alive. They were of the views that effective legislation was needed to be made in this regard. They said that local officials should also be grilled for letting such ugly incidents happen in their respective areas.
