(IHI Press Release) Rights Activists Flay Inclusion of Zehri, Bijarani in Cabinet.

Dawn November 07, 2008

ISLAMABAD, Nov 6: The civil society, human rights and women rights organizations have criticized the government for inducting two parliamentarians in the federal cabinet who ‘justified honour killings’ and inhuman tribal customs.

In a statement issued here Thursday, the representatives of over a dozen CSOs and NGOs said: “We, members of Insani Haqooq Ittehad express our strong condemnation and disappointment at the inclusion of Mir Israrullah Zehri and Mir Hazar Khan Bijarani in the new cabinet”.

In September when Senator Bibi Yasmin Shah raised the issue of burying alive of five women in Balochistan in the Senate, Mir Israrullah Zehri stunned members of the parliament that such “tribal traditions helped stop obscenity”.

He asked other legislators not to make a big issue out of it saying, “These are centuries-old traditions and I will continue to defend them. Only those who indulge in immoral acts should be afraid.” Three teenage girls and two elder women, abducted from the Umrani tribe, were shot first and buried alive.

Their crime was that they dared to think that they could choose the men they would contract a marriage. The two elder women were killed possibly because they were sympathetic to the girls’.

Their bodies were found halfeaten by wild animals. The barbaric crime horrified the whole nation.

Mir Hazar Khan Bijarani has also supported crimes against women. In 2005 he presided over a jirga in Kashmore, Sindh, forcing five minor girls to be given as compensation for a murder according to the reprehensible custom of Sang Chatti or Vanni.

He has been appointed Minister for Education! “While on the one hand President Zardari has ordered an enquiry into the tragic murder of 16 years old Tasleem Solangi, and has declared himself to be a supporter of the rights of women, on the other he has inducted two men who uphold and practice barbaric traditions that are used to kill and murder countless innocent girls and women”, the statement said.

They demanded disqualification from sitting in the parliament of those who, according to them, do not uphold the Constitution of the country and human rights, let alone be members of the Cabinet.

“It is high time to dispense with the politics of compromise and appeasement.” Those who have signed the statement are: Samar Minallah (Ethnomedia), Bilal Naqeeb (SPO), Samina Nazir (PODA), Naeem Mirza (Aurat Foundation), Aimal Khattak (SDPI), Fauzia Minallah (Funkor), Nageen Hayat (WAF), Shabana Arif (Rozan), Amjad Nazir (ActionAid), Arifa Mazhar (Sungi) Saleem Malik (Bedari), Sarwar Bari (Pattan), Shahnaz Bokhari (Progressive Women’s Association), Nasreen Azhar (HRCP), Farzana Bari and Marvi Sirmed.