Civil society criticises PM’s comments on women’s clothes as ‘factually incorrect’

A large number of women rights and civil society activists took part in a protest in Karachi on Saturday to criticise Prime Minister Imran Khan’s remarks about the way women dress up and its impact on men, and urged him to offer a public apology for his remarks.

The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) and other civil society bodies and feminist collectives organised the protest outside the Karachi Press Club.

The participating organisations included the Joint Action Committee, Women’s Action Forum, Sindh Commission on the Status of Women, Tehrik-e-Niswan, Aurat March, Aurat Foundation, and Women Democratic Front.

Calling the premier’s comments “factually incorrect, insensitive and dangerous”, speakers at the protest said that it only reinforced the common public perception that women were “knowing” victims and men “helpless’ aggressors”.

This is the second time that the prime minister has reduced sexual violence to an act of temptation, they said. “For the head of government — a government that claims to defend the rights of women and vulnerable groups — to insist on this view is simply inexcusable,” said a speaker.

“Imran Khan has disgraced not only the millions of women but also the high human ideals and values, which are even upheld by the international charter of human rights,” said a speaker.

Participants also showed their anger at several women members of the ruling party who had jumped to the prime minister’s defence and justified his comments in “vague and illogical terms”.

They appealed to the women legislators in the Senate and the national and provincial assemblies to pass a resolution against the prime minister, irrespective of their political affiliations.

They demanded an immediate public apology from the prime minister and assurances that “his highly flawed perception of how and why rape occurs does not inform the government’s attempts to tackle what is a serious and prevalent crime in Pakistan”.

In PM’s defence

Earlier this week, Minister of State for Climate Change Zartaj Gul and PTI MNAs Maleeka Ali Bokhari and Kanwal Shauzab told a press conference that they believed the premier's comments were “misinterpreted”.

“If a woman is wearing very few clothes, it will have an impact, it will have an impact on the men, unless they’re robots. I mean it’s common sense,” PM Khan had said when asked if what women wore had any effect on a man’s temptation.

He had brushed off accusations against him of rape victim blaming as “nonsense” and said the concept of purdah was to avoid temptation in society.

“We don’t have discos here, we don’t have nightclubs, so it is a completely different society, way of life here. So if you raise temptation in society to the point where all these young guys have nowhere to go, it has consequences,” PM Khan had said.

Gul believed PM Khan was “a symbol of women's empowerment”. She said the PTI government mobilised women for the first time in Pakistan. “A woman like me became a member of parliament from a tribal area,” she said, adding that there were five women in the cabinet for the first time.