CHORLAKI, Pakistan - With tears trickling down her face, Shiraka Bibi says her daughter Zafran, sentenced to be stoned to death under strict Islamic laws for alleged adultery, is the prettiest of her 10 children.

As Zafran languishes on death row with her young baby that she says is the result of being repeatedly raped by her brother-in-law, the case has become a rallying call for activists pushing for repeal of discriminatory laws.

Shiraka, wrapped in a knee-length dirty shawl and surrounded by Zafran's three brothers, is fighting hard to save her daughter from the brutal death ordered by a court in Kohat in North West Frontier Province under the harsh Islamic Hadud ordinance.

"She is more beautiful than any other of my children," Shiraka said pointing to her eldest son Mohabat Khan, sitting next to her on a cot and two younger sons standing in their mud-walled house in a remote village in northwestern Pakistan.

Zafran's story is tragic. Shiraka says her daughter was married to Naimat Khan in an arranged marriage 13 years ago.

Khan was jailed for life for murder in 1992 and Shiraka said Zafran had been the victim of repeated abuse by her brother-in-law ever since.

Shiraka says her daughter was repeatedly raped and gave birth to a baby. But the law offered no protection and as she was unable to prove rape by producing the required four male or eight female witnesses, she was instead found guilty of adultery.

No action has been taken against her alleged attacker and Zafran has challenged her conviction in the federal Shariah court, the highest Islamic court.

"We hope she will get justice and be acquitted," said Shiraka in her village of Chorlaki.

Onus on women

Under the Islamic laws introduced by former military dictator General Mohammad Zia-ul-Haq in 1979, as part of his Islamisation drive, the responsibility of proving rape rests with the victim, otherwise she will be punished for adultery.

The independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP), in its recent 2001 report, 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 and the attached social stigma.

"How is it possible for a woman to bring four witnesses to prove that she has been raped?" said Aneesa Zeb, a women's rights activist and lawyer in the northwestern city of Peshawar.

In the country's most populous province of Punjab, the HRCP says one woman is raped every six hours and a woman gang-raped every fourth day, yet only 321 cases were reported to police last year.

"These are harsh laws.... and women have always been at the receiving end," said HRCP chairman Afrasiab Khattak.

"Men are often bailed out and if the women are complainants, they are turned into accused," Khattak said.

Pakistan's military ruler General Pervez Musharraf, who has pledged to fight religious extremism after he backed the US-led war on terror in the wake of September 11 attacks, said earlier this month he was confident Zafran would not be stoned to death.

"(This) must not happen. It has never happened (before in Pakistan) and it will not happen," he told reporters.

But rights activists say the government should scrap the law.

"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," Khattak said.

"Now when it is being realized that we should get rid of extremism, then women should also get benefit of this trend and such negative laws should repealed," Zeb said.

Honour killings

If Zafran escapes being stoned, she could be vulnerable to attack for a so-called "honour killing", where male relatives murder women they accuse of immoral behaviour.

Shiraka said she would do all she could to protect Zafran from the brutal feudal tradition that claims scores of victims in Pakistan each year.

"We will fully protect her because she is innocent," Shiraka said.

Khan agreed with his mother. "I never visited her (Zafran) in prison because I could not face her but let me tell you ... we will protect her if she wants to live with us," he said.

Honour killings are rampant in Pakistan's feudal-dominated rural and tribal areas with an HRCP report citing 1,600 cases of such killings in the country this year.

(Agencies via Xinhua)