Re: Yvonne Ridley gets Saudi backing
Let GS be the witness, it is Che’s defination, not mine:
Frontier, Swabi (FATA)…are these areas heera mundi? I did’nt say it, you (Che) did…My Pashtun buddies, you hv to deal directly with this ignorant, buffoon…
http://www.jang.com.pk/thenews/mar2004-daily/29-03-2004/national/n8.htm
Women not allowed to cast votes in Swabi
*By Muhammad Farooq
*SWABI: Majority of the women were not allowed to exercise their ritght of votes in local bodies by-elections in Swabi district on Sunday, as only male voters exercised their right of adult franchise.
There were total 174 vacant seats of women in 56 union councils of the district Swabi. In some union council the nazims struck deals on women seats and they returned unopposed.
However, majority of polling stations for women voters remained deserted through out the day on Sunday as women voters were not allowed to cast their votes. The designated staffs, deputed for elections, were setting unattended most of the time in the polling stations and finally returned empty hands. It was not the first time that the women were barred from exercising their right to vote. In the previous elections they faced the same restrictions.
In some union council, families of certain people were threatened of social boycott if they allowed the women to either exercise their right of vote or contest elections. Some of them were also forced to withdraw their nomination papers. No one came forward to file nomination papers on 36 seats reserved for women and those women seat would remain vacant.
Overall, the elections were held peacefully and there was neck-to-neck contest going on between Muhammad Arshad and Anayatullah in the Garmunara union council for the naib-nazim slot. The former belong to PPPP and the latter to PMl-N.
And, here’s another report…
http://www.oneworld.net/article/view/85818/1/5241
Pakistani women barred in political arena
[email=“[email protected]”]Ahmad Naeem Khan
LAHORE, Mar 9 (OneWorld) – Even as abuses against women continue to rise, women’s groups in Pakistan are protesting against their harassment and discrimination as voters and election candidates, after a decision by political parties to bar them from contesting.
**In several parts of the deeply conservative North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) and southern Punjab’s tribal areas, religious leaders continue to lobby successfully to prevent women from contesting elections or casting their votes.
In the latest incident last week, five political parties joined hands in NWFP to keep women out of the forthcoming local body elections scheduled for March 28.
Mainstream political parties, including the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) of former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, Awami National Party (ANP) and the fundamentalist Jamaat-e-Islami (JI), blocked women’s participation in the election.
**
The organizations are being targeted by nongovernmental organization (NGO), Aurat Foundation’s Campaign for Ensuring Maximum Women Participation. According to them, in some NWFP districts major political parties had joined hands to prevent women from filing nomination papers.
Last Wednesday, the first day of filing of nominations, activists of one of the religious political parties formed monitoring teams to ensure no woman could submit her nomination papers.
This is despite the fact that hundreds of seats reserved for women in NWFP districts are lying vacant.
Aurat’s campaigners say the monitoring teams were collecting names of women who had filed nomination papers, pressuring them to withdraw from the elections.
This is an effective way of disenfranchising women.
Resident director of the Aurat Foundation, Rukhshanda Naz, says even during the general local bodies elections in 2000 and 2001, these organizations had entered into an agreement which banned women from voting and participation in the polls.
The Foundation is striving to ensure maximum participation of women in the by-elections, to create a conducive environment for them to cast their votes and contest elections.
PPP chairperson Benazir Bhutto, who was the Muslim world’s first woman prime minister, ordered an inquiry into the report. Bhutto, who lives in exile in London, asked her party’s secretary general to immediately reverse the decision if reports about banning women from voting were correct.
Gender equality, emancipation of women and their participation in social and political development was one of the party’s major planks enshrined in the PPP’s manifesto, she emphasized.
The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) also condemned mainstream political parties for their reported agreement to disallow women from voting in local body elections in NWFP.
According to data released by NGO, Madadgar, of the 564 cases of abuse in 2004, there were 183 murders, 95 rapes, 27 cases of stripping, 54 cases of torture and 32 cases of sexual harassment.
In the first two months of the current year, 237 women were kidnapped in different parts of the country. Over 153 women were abducted in the eastern Punjab province; 70 in the southern Sindh province, eight in the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) and six in the southwestern Balochistan province.
Last year, there were 3,867 cases of physical abuse, 1,351 cases of sexual abuse, 1,574 murders, 979 rapes, 128 harassment cases, 67 women were stripped and 22 cases of acid attacks.
Apart from the number of officially reported cases, a large number go unnoticed, says social activist Rehan Ahmad.
“This is because of anti-women laws and society’s attitude of turning a blind eye to the growing incidence of violence and social crimes against women,” he says.
A report released last month by the US State Department observes that domestic violence against women, rape, and abuse of children remain serious problems in Pakistan.