• Thursday, March 28, 2024

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Ex-wives hit out at Imran Khan on his rape comments

Imran Khan (PTI Photo)

By: PramodKumar

PAKISTAN prime minister Imran Khan’s second wife Reham Khan has hit out at him on his recent remarks about rape.

She tweeted a link to the 68-year-old’s comments along with the message: ‘The less he speaks the better it will be for all’, reported The Daily Mail.

She also responded to another tweet which joked about the their  marriage and contrasting personalities by saying: “Why do you think it couldn’t work out?”

The Pakistani politician recently suggested that the way women dress is responsible for rape.

A former BBC presenter, Reham Khan married him for ten months in 2015.

Earlier, Imran Khan’s first wife Jemima Goldsmith, who was married to him from 1995 until 2004 and has two children with him, tweeted out a passage from the Koran as a rebuke to Khan, adding: ‘The onus is on men.’

Meanwhile, Khan’s office has been attempting to defend him since his comments hit the headlines, suggesting they had been misconstrued.

Khan, 68, blamed ‘vulgarity’ for rising sex attacks when responding to a question during a Q&A.

He had singled out India’s Bollywood and the ‘sex, drugs and rock and roll’ culture of England in the 70s as examples of the kind of moral decline which he claimed leads to sex attacks.

The prime minister added that rape is ‘spreading like a cancer’ within Pakistani society and that preserving the Islamic concept of modesty should be used as a defence.

The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, an independent rights watchdog, has said that it was ‘appalled’ by the comments.

Data shows that 11 rapes are reported in Pakistan each day, which is thought to be only a fraction of the total, Geo News reported.

Fewer than 3 per  cent of sexual assault or rape cases result in a conviction in Pakistan, according to the Karachi-based group War Against Rape. It has called on Khan and his cabinet to undergo sensitivity training and for a judicial crackdown on rape.

 

In March, a court in Lahore sentenced two men to death for gang-raping a woman travelling along a major highway last year. The incident sparked nationwide protests after one senior police official publicly questioned why the woman had been driving alone at night with her children.

In December, Pakistan brought in new laws that will see some rapists chemically castrated.

Pakistan Weekly

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