I would agree that your understanding is better than the Islamist States Esalam,this may also be of interest:
Human Rights in Pakistan
Constitutionally Sanctioned Gender Oppression
In a 6 June, 2002 story (released by the Chinese Press Agency, Xinhua), the Shanghai Star carried the headline: "Pakistani mother vows to defend raped daughter", and reported that Shiraka Bibi's daughter Zafran was languishing on death row with her young baby, born after the result of being repeatedly raped by her brother-in-law. According to the report, Zafran was married to Naimat Khan (jailed for life for murder in 1992) in an arranged marriage 13 years ago. Zafran then became the victim of repeated sexual abuse by her brother-in-law. But the law offered her no protection, as she was unable to prove rape by producing the required four male witnesses, and was instead found guilty of adultery. No action has been taken against her alleged attacker and Zafran has appealed her conviction in the federal Shariah court, the highest Islamic court. If Zafran loses her appeal, she will be stoned to death under the Islamic Hadud ordinance.
This case poignantly illustrates the extreme injustice born my women in Pakistan. Under the Islamic laws introduced by former military dictator General Mohammad Zia-ul-Haq in 1979, the responsibility of proving rape rests with the victim (which incredulously requires the testimony of four male witnesses), otherwise she will be punished for adultery. "How is it possible for a woman to bring four witnesses to prove that she has been raped?" asks Aneesa Zeb, a women's rights activist and lawyer in the northwestern city of Peshawar. In fact, if a man rapes a woman in the presence of several women, he cannot be convicted under the Hudood Ordinances because women are not permitted to testify. Similarly, if a Muslim man rapes a Parsi, Hindu or Christian woman in the presence of other (Parsi, Hindu or Christian) men and women, he cannot be convicted because non-Muslim witnesses cannot testify.
Since all consensual extramarital sexual relations are considered violations of the Hudood Ordinances, if a woman cannot prove the absence of consent (i.e. rape or sexual abuse), there is the danger that she may be charged with a violation of the Hudood ordinances for fornication or adultery, for which the maximum punishment is public flogging or death by stoning.
Commenting on Zafran's plight, Afrasiab Khattak (of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) said: "Zafran Bibi's case is not the first and the last one under this law and more Zafran Bibis will suffer as long as this law remains on the statute book". She went on to note how because of such laws, "Men are often bailed out and if the women are complainants, they are turned into accused" . In its recent 2001 report, the independent HRCP estimates that one woman in Pakistan is raped every two hours, but most sexual assaults go unreported because of the impossibility of being able to prove the charges. In the country's most populous province of Punjab, the HRCP states that one woman is raped every six hours and a woman gang-raped every fourth day, yet only 321 cases were reported to police in the previous year.
Even some police officials admit that in a majority of rape cases the victims are pressured to drop rape charges because of the threat of Hudood adultery charges being brought against them. This allows rape, (and gang rape in particular), to be commonly used as a means of social control by landlords and local criminal bosses seeking to humiliate and terrorize local residents. The police rarely respond to such attacks, and may even participate in them.
According to the Commission of Inquiry for Women, laws on adultery and rape have been subject to widespread misuse, with 95 percent of the women accused of adultery being found innocent either in the court of first instance or on appeal. However, by that time, the woman may have spent months in jail, suffering sexual abuse at the hands of the police, and the destruction of her reputation. The Commission found that the main victims of the Hudood laws are poor women who are unable to defend themselves against slanderous charges. The laws also have been used by husbands and other male family members to punish their wives and female relatives for reasons having nothing to do with sexual propriety.
As many as 40-50% of the women in jails in cities like Lahore, Peshawar, and Mardan await trial for adultery, but according to some human rights monitors, 80 percent of all adultery-related Hudood cases are filed without any supporting evidence. But even when acquitted, the trauma for the woman may not end, because they then become vulnerable to attack for a so-called "honour killing", where male relatives murder women they accuse of immoral behaviour. According to human rights observers, honour killings are rampant in Pakistan's feudal-dominated rural and tribal areas - a 1998 HRCP report citing 1,600 cases of such killings in that year.
