It is extremely difficult for women prisoners to seek redress for sexual and physical abuse by police. They must confront rape and evidence laws that overtly discriminate; they face the possibility of criminal prosecution or—at a minimum—social ostracism if they fail to prove their rape allegations; they must combat police and judicial attitudes that are clearly biased against them; and they must overcome procedural obstacles to prosecuting the police that affect all victims of custodial abuse, including the absence of any independent body to investigate and prosecute abuses of police power.
The possibility of obtaining equal justice in Pakistan has been further reduced over the past decade by the steady erosion of judicial independence, mainly through the government's retention of undue influence over the judiciary and through the establishment of parallel religious and "speedy trial" courts, which apply summary procedures that restrict fair trial guarantees. While Human Rights Watch does not oppose religious courts or speedy-trial rules per se, both the religious and speedy trial courts in Pakistan have been shown to weaken the independence and jurisdiction of the civil courts and to violate due process. This trend culminated in the adoption of the 1991 Shariat Act, which subjects the constitution and the law-making authority of the legislature to the revisional authority of Islamic religious leaders, many ofwhom, according to local human rights activists, "have been known to take positions against women."28
The discriminatory treatment encountered by women who enter the criminal justice system reflects the treatment of women as second-class citizens in Pakistani society generally. From birth, the life of the average Pakistani woman is characterized by her economic, social, cultural and political subordination. She will receive less food, medical care, and education, be paid and inherit less, have fewer opportunities to participate in civil society, and live a shorter life than her male counterparts.29 Even in comparison with women in many other parts of the world, she will on average marry earlier, bear more children, be more likely to die in childbirth, and work more hours without compensation. Like women everywhere, she will be at risk of violence in the home and, in some areas of Pakistan, she may face violence by the community, particularly if she engages in behavior seen to deviate from prescribed social norms.
Given this subordinate status, once a woman is in prison she is unlikely to know how to secure even the minimal protections due to her under law, or to make herself heard if she tried to secure those protections. Eighty percent of all female prisoners in Pakistan are illiterate, and nearly 90 percent live on a monthly family income equal to less than US$40. According to a survey conducted in 1988, over 90 percent of the ninety women prisoners interviewed in two prisons in Punjab were unaware of the law under which they had been imprisoned. Over 60 percent had received no legal assistance whatsoever.30
28 A representative of the Women's Action Forum (WAF), a nongovernmental, national women's rights organization, quoted in Women Living Under Muslim Laws, "WAF Rejects Shariat Bill," Special Bulletin on the Erosion of the Judiciary and Human Rights Legislation (Lahore, 1992), p. 7.
29 For more on this, see Farida Shaheed, Pakistan's Women: An Analytical Description (Lahore, 1990), pp. 20-22.
30 Jahangir and Jilani, The Hudood Ordinances . . . , pp. 134-136.
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