Group Offers Grim Data on Pakistani Women, Minors

More than 1,000 females were killed last year in the name of honor in Pakistan, even if the justification was as flimsy as a woman sitting next to a man who was not a relative, a human rights report said Wednesday.

The number of street children and child prostitutes has increased in the last decade. Pakistanis grew poorer, and most people remain illiterate. Half of all children didn’t attend school.

The picture given by the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan was one in which women, children, and religious and ethnic minorities lived in dire circumstances through the 1990s.

The report said that the victims of violence were often females suspected of breaking Islam’s code of conduct.

“The most frequent killers by far were brothers, followed by husbands,” the commission said in its annual report for 1999. “More than 15% of the victims in Punjab were minors.” Punjab is an eastern state.

The independent rights organization sharply criticized the nation’s elected governments of the 1990s and assailed the military takeover last year.

Commission Chairman Afrasiab Khattak said the panel had just one message for the military government that seized power in October: “Please restore democracy at the earliest.”

The military ruler, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, has rebuffed international pressure to set a timeframe for a return to democracy.

The rights commission criticized a new law giving the government sweeping powers to detain corruption suspects for 90 days without charging them or allowing them to see a lawyer.