THIS Pakistni regime does not have any ability to control and punish ignorant Taliban,they are all just issuing fake statements now and tehy will not take any action aginst criminal Taliban.
Mwaqar
ISLAMABAD: As television images of the public flogging of a teenage girl in a village in Swat sent shockwaves across the country, Prime Minister Syed Yousaf Raza Gilani joined the voices of condemnation, and ordered an inquiry into the gruesome act by the local Taliban in the name of their own brand of Shariah.
The Prime Minister has condemned the incident in strongest possible words, terming it as 'a shameful happening which has tarnished the image of the country', said an official statement on Friday.
He said, the whole episode was against the principles and teachings of Islam. 'Islam teaches us treating women politely', said the prime minister, adding, the government believed in the rights of women and would take every possible measure for the protection of their rights.
Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry on Friday held the flogging in Swat a serious violation of fundamental rights and ordered the Interior Secretary 'to procure' the victim girl and produce her before his court on April 6.
Meanwhile, both civil society and public representatives have also reacted strongly to the incident, and feared that it might spread to the rest of the country in future.
Throughout the day on Friday, tv channels kept on screening a screaming 17-year old girl, who was flogged for 34 times under the broad day light, encircled by local male crowd in Matta area, further up the valley of Swat.
The amateur video, apparently shot on a mobile phone, shows a woman wearing red-colour shalwar and black burqa face down on the ground, with dozens of men, mostly onlookers, watching it with amazement. Her legs and hands are being held by two men, and a third bearded person is shown whipping her repeatedly.
Soon after the first couple of lashes the woman starts to scream, and scrams loudly, but no one from the crowd moves or try and stop the ferocious-looking men from committing the horrific act. 'Please, please' shouts the woman in Pushto. 'Stop it, please', comes another scream, but to no avail.
The public flogging continues for several minutes, after which the wailing woman is dragged by the group of armed men to a nearby building.
The video shown by several news channels sent a wave of shock, anger and depression across the country.
Initially some of the self-styled defenders of the Pakistani Taliban tried to down-play to significance of the incident, and said it was not clear from the video if it was a recent incident, or if it all happened in Swat.
One of the ANP leaders went to the extent of accusing those showing the video of trying to undermine the Swat peace agreement between the provincial government and the local militants headed by Maulana Fazlullah.
But they were soon silenced by a statement by the Swat Taliban spokesman Muslim Khan, who told a couple of tv channels, that it was indeed the work of the local Taliban. He justified the action and said the 17-year-old was seen out of her house with a man who was not her husband, something that he described as un-Islamic.
The incident has outraged many human rights and women groups in the country, many of them have accused government of giving a free hand to the extremist religious groups to enforce their own brand of Islamic shariah in Swat and some other parts of Northern Pakistan.
'We strongly condemned this barbaric and heinous crime and demands immediate action against those who were involved in this inhuman act,' Women’s Parliamentary Caucus said in a statement on Friday.
Secretary of the caucus, Ms Nafisa Shah said, neither Islam nor constitution of the Islamic republic of Pakistan allowed such acts, instead protected fundamental women rights. She pledged, the caucus would take up this issue in the parliament, and with the federal and provincial governments, so that culprits could be brought to the book.
Several local NGOs working for the women rights also expressed their shock over the tragic incident and demanded immediate action by the government.
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