Ms Rasheeda Patel, an eminent lawyer and President of the Pakistan Women Lawyers Association has urged women to resist all forms of oppression and raise their voice against injustice meted out to them. She also called for the repeal of Hudood Ordinance and other ?black laws?, that discriminate against women in the country, at the earliest.

Ms Patel was speaking at a meeting on the The Status and Contents of Black Laws Affecting Women held at the Karachi Press Club. She said that before 1979, Pakistani laws had been better suited to social status of women in the country. ?Even those laws were not perfect and could have been improved to make them more responsive to changing situation where women are more actively involved both at individual and social levels,? she admitted.

However, the changes made in the legal system by the martial law government of General Zia in the name of Islamization were rather retrogressive. These laws were inherently biased against half the country?s population, she observed.

Ms Patel told the meeting that before 1979, there had been very few female convicts or under-trial women in prisons. The so-called Islamization of Pakistani laws, she added, had given another tool to the power structures in this male-dominated society that they liberally used against women. ?It is no wonder that today, Pakistani jails house many more women than before and about 70 per cent of these inmates are behind the bars for cases registered under Zina and Hudood Ordinance.?

She pin-pointed several flaws in the implementation of the Islamic laws and asserted that these laws had failed to serve their purpose. ?In fact, these laws are proved to be counter-productive as instead of providing better judicial cover to the society, these have been used against promotion of justice,? she added. She cited several cases as examples in support of her contentions. Her lecture was followed by a lively interactive session during which the participants raised many questions.