Islamabad, Pakistan (CNN) Sex offenders convicted of multiple rapes could face chemical castration in Pakistan after lawmakers on Wednesday passed new anti-rape legislation that aims to speed up convictions and impose tougher sentences.
It comes in response to a mass public outcry over a recent surge in rapes against women and children in the country, and growing demands to ensure justice for victims of sexual assault.
The bill states that Pakistan's government must establish special courts nationwide to expedite rape trials and ensure sexual abuse cases are decided "expeditiously, preferably within four months."
Those found guilty of gang rape will be sentenced to death or life in prison.
Chemical castration is the use of drugs to reduce libido or sexual activity. It is a legal form of punishment in countries including South Korea, Poland, the Czech Republic and in some US states.
marnas86 on November 18th, 2021 at 18:05 UTC »
Seeing Amnesty International's condemnation and questions about root cause, I think there is something that does need to be done by our government about it.
Step one: making it possible to get married cheaply and early - first step in doing so is to create a secular marital registry office where people can have super-cheap no-frills weddings with a maximum number of attendees (if you go this route, you can only have max say 10 people at your wedding).
Why? Because the societal expectations around marriage are sooo high that it creates a large financial burden for males and so it creates in poverty-stricken males a subculture of seeing marriage as impossible which leads to high levels of pent-up sexual tension in these males. Make marriages cheaper and easier to do and arrange and create a way for people to get married without having to spend lakhs on a wedding.
Step two: Ensure that the SNC teaches a consent culture and that rape is both a crime against the state, a valid civil lawsuit-cause and in the Islamiyat course that rape is a sin against Islam. Also create an adult-targeted educational program as the SNC will never reach them instead create an adult-learning program for people to be able to learn about the change in culture that is needed to defeat rape-culture.
Step three: Create ability for rape-victims and their families to sue rapists and rapists' families for damages under a new civil court system for this with a female-heavy judiciary and an ability to impose monetary fines and assess recompense and to be an originator of an FIR for victims who want to seek redress anonymously and able to pass on a case to the criminal court for prison sentences at the choice of the rape-victim and their family.
Step four: Include questions on rape in the 2027 census, asking people when they were last raped, have they ever been raped and allow for duplicate submissions from the same household and for non-family-heads to submit census info for their own behalf without having to put data on the family-head-submitted census-form.
Step five: Promote healthy relationships and have dramas model healthy relationships and put disclaimers at the bottom on TV serials when they show things that are emblematic of bad relationships. Eg like with the smoking ads when the disclaimer scrolls by or when you see stuff like "don't try this at home" etc.
Step six: Create shelters for rape-victims, which can both act as rape-reporting-areas (and anonymously file FIRs to police for investigation if that is what the rape victim wants) and as places of refuge for rape-victims to hide from their rapists (since in some cases the rapists are family-members).
Abrahalhabachi on November 18th, 2021 at 15:15 UTC »
Ok maybe but how about making it easier for rape victims to come forward and get help, and also providing that help?
Electrozaptits on November 18th, 2021 at 11:45 UTC »
This looks like political grandstanding: making a bold noisey statement law that's not been thought through. It's not going to affect anything when conviction rates are low and reporting rates are abysmal because society punishes the victims more than the perpetrators.