Violence against women in Pakistan
remained "rampant" in 2005, with President Pervez
Musharraf sparking a global outcry with his remarks on
rape, Human Rights Watch said Wednesday in its annual
report.

Military ruler Musharraf's government was too busy
consolidating its own power and violating human rights
in pursuit of the US-led "war on terror" to take any
action to help women, the US-based organisation said.

"Domestic and international human rights organizations
and media drew attention this year to the governments
dismissive attitude regarding violence against women,"
the report said.

It highlighted the cases of Mukhtaran Mai, a gang-rape
victim banned from going to the United States so she
would not "malign Pakistan", and a female doctor who
said a Musharraf aide coerced her to leave the country
after she was allegedly raped by an army officer.

Musharraf later said that getting raped had become a
"money making" concern and that many Pakistanis felt
it was an easy way to get a foreign visa and emigrate,
the group said.

"Despite the international and domestic condemnation,
President Musharraf has not apologized for these
remarks or withdrawn them," it said.

The report further accused Pakistan of failing to
overturn Islamic laws that make it almost impossible
to prove rape, and for not tackling the deaths of
hundreds of women in so-called "honour killings".

Separately, the "war on terror" in Pakistan since 2001
had "involved serious violations of human rights," the
report said, with suspects often being detained
without charge and subject to trials without proper
judicial process.

Problems persisted due to military operations in
Pakistan's tribal areas bordering Afghanistan,
"including collective punishment, extrajudicial
executions, arbitrary detentions, and limited access
to prisoners."

Sectarian violence continued to increase in Pakistan,
especially in the predominantly Shiite Northern Areas,
the group reported. "Human rights organizations and
independent analysts assert that Pakistanis
intelligence agencies are complicit in the sectarian
violence in the Northern Areas," it said. [Source: IRIN]