by Ali Akbar in Dawn, March 30th, 2019
A man in Peshawar’s Mathra area allegedly cut off his wife’s hair and subjected her to physical torture after accusing her of not covering her head during a wedding ceremony, police said on Friday.
A first information report of the incident was registered on the woman’s complaint at Mathra police station on March 27, an on-duty police official told DawnNewsTV.
The woman in her complaint to police stated that she had gone to the wedding of her husband’s cousin earlier this month. While greeting relatives during the ceremony, she said her dupatta slipped off her head, which was seen by her husband.
She said her after she returned home, her husband — who is a member of the Malakand Levies force — first accosted her over not covering her head and then started beating her with punches and kicks.
“There was no one else in the room except my three-year-old child and so he continued beating me,” the police official quoted the woman as saying. She claimed her husband later grabbed a pair of scissors and chopped off all of her hair.
She said she was filing a complaint of the incident with a delay because her husband had threatened to kill her if she spoke about it with anyone, and it was only now that she found the chance to approach police.
The woman’s husband has been nominated in the FIR and police say they are making efforts to arrest him.
The incident has come to light days after a woman in Lahore said her husband and his employees allegedly stripped her naked, beat her, and shaved her head over her refusal to dance for them.
Pakistan ranks 150 out of 153 countries on The Georgetown Institute’s Women, Peace and Security index ─ among the five worst countries for women in the world. According to 2016 data, 26.8 per cent of Pakistani women said they have experienced intimate partner violence.
https://www.dawn.com/news/1472679/peshawar-man-chops-off-wifes-hair-for-not-covering-her-head-at-wedding
SCSW voices concern over violence against women, forced conversions
report in The News, Mar 30, 2019
Showing grave concern over the recent hike in incidents of violence against women in Sindh, the Sindh Commission on Status of Women (SCSW) has sounded the alarm for urgent action and commenced several initiatives to end intolerance and violence in the province.
The commission called upon Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah to speed up the process of approving the laws reviewed by the SCSW by placing them on the agenda of cabinet meetings on a priority basis so that implementation of pro-women laws could be become easy.
In a statement released on Friday, the commission strongly condemned the alleged forced conversions of minor girls Reena and Raveena from Hinduism to Islam and their underage marriages.
“There is no place in Sindh for such acts of cowardice committed in the name of religion. The SCSW will hold consultations with the relevant stakeholders in Sindh on a law to deter the horrifying trend of forced conversions in the province,” it said.
The SCSW also called upon the civil society to come forward and support the commission for running an effective awareness-raising drive all over Sindh. The commission is in the process of ironing out the logistics of a training programme and will soon start a training of Nikkah khuah, pandits and pastors for effective implementation of the Sindh Child Marriages Restraint Act.
It also noted an alarming trend that these conversions were largely of underage girls who were taken away from their families and then reappeared as someone’s wife.
“The law of Sindh clearly prohibits underage marriages. Conversion to Islam under such suspicious conditions is rightfully sparking concern in the Hindu community in the province. Moreover, it is a gender issue with women’s bodies being used to exercise religious power,” it said.
“The religion of Islam does not accept forcible conversions, and this lesson should be drilled in by local Muslim clerics and mosque Imams. Removing underaged girls from their homes, separating them from their parents, and then marrying them to much older men against the wishes of their parents are all acts against the teachings of Islam,” the commission said.
It added that forcibly converting anyone was a criminal offence as it infringed upon the right to practise one’s religion freely, as enshrined in the country’s constitution. The commission stressed the importance of sensitisation training of police officers, saying that recent cases of gender-based violence had again highlighted the need for it.
“The police must be sensitised to be receptive to complains of forced conversions and not to belittle the issue. The police is the first line of defence against criminal elements and exploitation of religious sentiments is a serious offense that the police can prove to be an effective deterrent against.”https://www.thenews.com.pk/print/450610-scsw-voices-concern-over-violence-against-women-forced-conversions