Pakistan women's rights take centre stage

Adnan Adil
BBC correspondent in Lahore

One main focus of the play is on unjust laws on adultery

Mullahs deface posters depicting women; zealots burn videotapes; female students are ordered to wear shawls and women prisoners suffer discrimination under medieval laws in the name of religion.

These were the themes of a 20-minute play staged recently in Lahore by a group of amateur artists.

The aim was to highlight the struggle for women's rights in a country facing civil liberty questions following the rise to power of the mullahs in North-West Frontier Province.

The play focuses on several of the provincial government's policy goals.

They include imposing a ban on male doctors treating women, introducing compulsory veils for female students and authorising officers of Islamic parties to break into homes to see if people are following the mullahs' edicts.

Assembly move

More important still is the focus on the 20,000 women languishing in jails across the country under the medieval Sharia laws on adultery.

The laws, introduced in the 1970s by the dictator General Zia ul-Haq, are still in force.

Producers say theatre can be effective in a country of low literacy

The women, many of whom have been raped and then accused of adultery, cannot be freed unless they find four Muslim male witnesses to testify on their behalf.

A national women's commission, set up by President Pervez Musharraf, has declared the laws on rape - known as the Hudood laws - to be unjust and against the spirit of Islam.

A few weeks ago, Sherry Rehman, a National Assembly member from the opposition Pakistan People's Party, tabled a bill to repeal this law and pass others to raise the status of women.

The Islamic parties strongly oppose the moves.

The Lahore play, shown at the Human Rights Commission, is part of a campaign by a number of rights organisations trying to resist the Islamic parties that have formed the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal alliance.

Mohammed Waseem, the producer of the play, says theatre is an effective medium to convey the message to the general public in a country where literacy levels are low.

He has staged several such plays, documentaries and street theatre within his organisation, the Interactive Resource Centre.

Traditional values

In one video docudrama, women living in the victims' shelter, Dastak, portray how they were beaten by their husbands, forced to marry young or charged with adultery to deprive them of their property.

Islamic lawmakers oppose laws raising the status of women

These true tales are to show how laws and the family fail to support them or protect them from violence.

Traditional values mean women suffering brutality can often find no refuge with parents or in state institutions.

A lucky few do find places in specialist refuges - with women coming from all classes and backgrounds.

One of the women in the docudrama, Salma, is the daughter of a sessions judge who faced murder threats when she sought divorce from her abusive husband.

She found a place in a Lahore refuge - although refuge is not always guaranteed. A few years earlier, another woman, Samia, the daughter of a big businessman, was murdered by her relatives in the shelter.

Such "honour" killings, says Mehboob Khan of the Human Rights Commission, are encouraged by Sharia because the attackers can escape punishment by paying compensation under the Qisas and Diyat laws.

Showing films and performing plays to highlight the issues may not bring immediate relief to the victims, but at least it provides some platform from which they can register their protest.