Pakistan abolishes death penalty for public stripping of woman

The Pakistan Senate issued a ruling last week abolishing the death penalty for the public stripping of women. The ruling body also dropped the death penalty for harboring hijackers, replacing capital punishment with life imprisonment for these crimes.

According to Pakistan lawmakers, these reforms have been adopted in a bid to align Pakistan’s laws with  international human rights standards, especially under the European Union’s Generalized Scheme of Preferences Plus (GSP+)  trade agreement with the EU. One of the criteria of the trade agreement is to ensure death penalty is reserved only for the most serious crimes.

Under existing law, Section 354-A allows for capital punishment or life imprisonment for anyone who assaults and strips a woman in public, while Section 402-C applies the same punishment to individuals who knowingly harbor hijackers.

The route to the reforms was not easy, as the opposition PTI said that stripping a woman in public is no less severe than murder. PTI Senator Barrister Syed Ali Zafar argued that stripping a woman in public is no less severe than murder, insisting that removing the death penalty weakens deterrence. The Balochistan Awami Party was also against the reforms. “The softening of punishment could embolden offenders, especially when the conviction rate in such cases remains alarmingly low. This is not right. This is not going to help the country or its women,” Senator Samina Mumtaz Zehri warned.

However, the move was welcomed by rights activists. “Publicly stripping women of their clothes is one of the most heinous crimes and must be met with the harshest punishment,” Mahnaz Rahman, woman’s rights activist and former executive director of the Aurat Foundation, told Arab News. “While we strongly advocate for severe punishments for such acts, we do not support the death penalty for any crime, including this one.”

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