Islamabad - Pakistan's parliament will on Thursday debate bills
aimed at tackling so-called honour killings and amending its rape law,
officials said, following the murder of a social media star last week.
Rights groups and politicians have for years called for tougher
laws to tackle perpetrators of violence against women in Pakistan and the
debate follows a slew of high-profile killings in the country.
Lawmakers from both lower and upper houses of parliament will take
up proposed bills Thursday afternoon, parliament official Hasan Murtaza Bukhari
said, and votes on the suggested changes are expected within weeks.
"After discussion and approval of these bills by this
committee, the drafts will be tabled in a
joint sitting of the house which is likely to promptly take it up," he
said.
"But we are not sure how much time this process will take.
The salient features of these drafts will
also be known only after being presented in the committee," added Bukhari.
Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's ruling PML-N party has a large
majority of seats in the lower house and the bills are believed to have enough
backing from opposition parties to pass in the senate too.
The proposed bills could seek to close a loophole that allows
those who kill in the name of honour -- usually a relative of the victim - to
evade punishment by seeking clemency from other family members.
Pakistan amended its criminal code in 2005 to prevent men who kill
female relatives pardoning themselves as an "heir" of the victim.
But punishment is left to a judge's discretion when other
relatives of the victim forgive the killer - a loophole which critics say is
exploited.
Social media starlet Qandeel Baloch was strangled to death by her
brother on Friday, once again casting a spotlight on the custom of "honour
killings", which claims around a thousand lives in Pakistan every year.
Held up by many of the country's youth for her liberal views and
forthrightness, Baloch - who posed with mullahs and courted controversy in
plunging dresses - was also reviled by many and frequently subject to
misogynist abuse online.
Rights group Amnesty International this week called on the country
to "undertake structural reforms that end impunity for so-called 'honour'
killings, including by passing legislation that removes the option of clemency
for such killings".
