Honour laws

For the last two years, an anti-‘honour’ killing bill has been languishing in the National Assembly despite having been passed by the Senate. Finally, a watered-down version    of that bill has now been passed by a joint sitting of parliament and, despite some imperfections, should make it easier to prosecute and convict those who kill in the name of ‘honour’. Previously, those who killed their wives, sisters and daughters could get off scot-free simply by pressurising one of their own family members to pardon them.  The original version of the bill would not have allowed pardons at all in cases of ‘honour’ killing while the bill which was passed by parliament this week will allow family members to grant a pardon only if the death sentence has been awarded to the perpetrator, in which case the convicted person will serve a life sentence instead.This will have the real-life effect of essentially voiding the death penalty in such cases since the families mostly do end up having to issue the pardon and thus ‘honour’ killers will not receive the punishment that other killers would normally receive. Even so, these reservations aside, the bill is a major step in the right direction and the PPP deserves a lot of credit for persevering with it even when other political parties shied away from it. And the government deserves some credit for finally allowing it to pass, even if it would have been better had the original text of the bill been retained.

In the same joint session, parliament also passed an anti-rape bill that will allow DNA testing on both the victim and the alleged culprit. Passing this bill was particularly bold since the Council of Islamic Ideology had specifically rejected allowing DNA testing. It had also previously rejected women’s rights bills introduced by the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Punjab governments, with the former taking its advice and withdrawing the bill while the latter still passed it into law. Should the CII weigh in on these two bills passed by parliament and reject them, the government should follow Punjab’s lead. The anti-rape bill, too, was long overdue since DNA testing has been a standard investigative tool around the world for many years and will make it much easier to prove rape cases even when witnesses are not available to confirm the victim’s account. There will be logistical issues, though, since DNA testing is not widely available throughout the country and the government needs to follow up by making funding available to set up labs for this purpose. The police will also have to face punishment if they refuse to use DNA testing. Taken together, these two bills should be seen not as the culmination of the fight to ensure justice for victims of rape and ‘honour’ killings but the first step in an uphill struggle.        In the case of the ‘honour’ killing bill, judges will have the sole authority to decide what qualifies as an ‘honour’ killing, and there is a danger that societal pressures will simply lead to such killings to be classified as regular murders.          There is still much more to be done, both in ensuring equality in the eyes of the law and in creating a society that sees these crimes for what they are rather than just desserts for ‘immoral’ women.