On Saturday, a Pakistani female lawmaker was harassed by her male colleague in the parliament. After this, she threatened to harm herself and expressed her concern over how the laws that have been put in place to protect women are not being implemented properly.
The victim, Nusrat Sehar Abbasi is an MP in the Sindh province. She expressed her rage after Imdad Pitafi invited her to private chambers in the Parliament, which is considered as assault in Pakistan. Her rage was fueled further after the Deputy Speaker, who was also a woman, refused to take any action. Abbasi was pictured holding a bottle of petrol on Monday willing to sacrifice herself if no action was taken.
The Federal party chiefs were forced to intervene as this incident was highlighted on social media, after which Pitafi apologized and offered her a veil, which is a mark of respect. Though the incident is now over, Abbasi insisted that it questions the implementation of laws which protect women from harassment. Abbasi said to the AFP (Agence France-Presse), “Their (Laws) implementation is still a dream,” she added, “Even us, the parliamentarians are not safe from gender biases and harassment.”
Women in Pakistan have fought for decades before earning their freedom of speech. But with the highly conservative thoughts still in place, harrasment and acid attacks are frequent and hindering the hard earned freedom.
Crime against women in Pakistan is quite evident in many parts, an example for this is when last year a bill was passed in Punjab province that ‘any offense against women should be called violence’, which was protested by Islamic religious body. They stated that men should be allowed to ‘lightly beat’ their wives and that it cannot be considered violence. In the face of such incidents and comment that there would be little impact of strict laws, shows the state of women in the conservative Country.
