LAHORE
A multi-party conference arranged by the Awami Workers Party on Saturday vowed to wage a joint struggle against attempts by the rightwing to pressure the provincial government into withdrawing or amending the Protection of Women Against Domestic Violence Act in accordance with their wishes.
According to a press release, the joint declaration passed at the end of the conference condemned religious parties for preventing the recognition of the right to women of protection against domestic violence and stressed the need for mobilization of the public in support of a progressive agenda for social change in the country. Speakers stressed the need for an alliance of left-leaning and secular forces to confront the right-wing in all its manifestations, including economic exploitation of working people.
AWP President Abid Hasan Minto said that the law passed by the provincial assembly was not adequate to guarantee recognition of women’s rights and protection of women from domestic violence. However, he said it was important for all progressive political parties, social movements, trade union activists and civil society organisations to get together in support of the law and to resist religious parties’ opposition to the domestic violence and other pro-women laws. Minto condemned the provincial government for starting negotiations with the religious parties to address their concerns over the law. He said the progressive forces should not let the government submit to pressure from religious parties and weaken the institutional framework proposed under the law to provide relief to victims of domestic violence. In this regard, he said, the government had already agreed to include family members of couples involved in domestic violence cases into the proceedings of the district-level women protection councils. He said this should be resisted.
Women Action Forum’s Hina Jillani said that the state could not be allowed to shy away from its responsibility to protect its women citizens from acts of violence. She said all crimes that affect women should be recognized as crimes against the state rather than against individuals. She stressed the need for collaboration among all progressive forces to wage a joint struggle against right-wing’s political activism. On the tendency to equate support for the law to opposition for the family system, Jillani said the family system that condoned gender violence and placed men in a position of unaccountable authority could not be defended. She said progressive forces wanted a family system that promoted egalitarian relationships among its individual members and protected all of them from acts of violence.
Among the shortcomings of the women protection law that needed to be fixed, Jillani mentioned delay in enforcement and the possibility of implementation in selective regions which she said was against the Constitution.
Supreme Court Bar Association President Ali Zafar said that alongside street agitation against religious parties an intellectual battle was also needed to discredit their propaganda on pro-women laws. Among his suggestions for improvements in the law were need for interim protection, gender sensitization of the police force, improved prosecution of cases registered under pro-women laws and reform of family courts to enhance their efficiency. In his statement in support of the conference, Pakhtunkhwa Milli Awami Party (PkMAP) president Mahmood Khan Acakzai extended support of his party for the declaration passed at the conference and said that his party’s activists would join progressive forces in their struggle against the right-wing.
Representing the Awami National Party, Mian Iftikhar Hussain (central general secretary) extended support for the declaration and urged the gathering to seek allies without parliamentary parties and state institutions. He said the struggle for a society free of gender-based violence needed to be waged in collaboration with all like-minded forces.
Representative of several other progressive political parties, trade unions, non-violent social movements and civil society organizations participated in the conference. They included National Party, Balochistan National Party (Mengal), Jeay Sindh Mahaz, Sindh United Party, Hazara Siyasi Party, Pakistan Peoples Party -Shaheed Bhutto and Workers, Supreme Court and Lahore High Court Bar Associations, Punjab and Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists, Pakistan Trade Union Federation and Pakistan Bhatta Mazdoor Union (Punjab), Anjuman Mazareen Punjab, National Students Federation and Democratic Students Alliance and Feminist Collective.