Pakistan President Gen. Pervez Musharraf said Friday that he ordered a travel ban on the victim of a village council-ordered gang rape to protect Pakistan’s image abroad.
Musharraf said Mukhtar Mai, whose rape was ordered to punish her family for her brother’s alleged affair with a woman from another family, was being taken to the United States by foreign nongovernment organizations “to bad-mouth Pakistan” over the “terrible state” of the nation’s women.
“She was told not to go” to the United States to appear on media there to tell her story, Musharraf told the Auckland Foreign Correspondents’ Club.
He said NGOs are “Westernized fringe elements” which “are as bad as the Islamic extremists.”
Musharraf acknowledged placing the 36-year-old on the list of people banned from leaving Pakistan while responding to media questions during a three-day visit to New Zealand.
Pakistan Wednesday lifted the travel ban after Mai appealed to Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz.
Mai gained attention at home and abroad after she defied a culture of shame that often surrounds rape victims by going public over her June 2002 assault in the eastern Punjab province.
More: in.rediff.com
Related Travel Information
Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf said Wednesday that he has lifted a ban on travel abroad for the victim in a rape case.
Musharraf's statement came one day after Pakistan's Supreme Court overturned the acquittals of 13 men and ordered their re-arrests in the 2002 gang rape of Mukhtar Mai, 33.
"Mukhtar Mai is free to go wherever she pleases, meet whomever she wants and say whatever she pleases," Musharraf said on his Web site.
"While I sincerely regret what Mai had to endure, the government is taking action to remedy it," Musharraf said.
A council of elders in Meerwala, her home village in eastern
Musharraf may travel to Cochin to attend one-day international
Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf may travel to Cochin in southern India to attend the one-day international between the two nations on April 2, a cricket board source told AFP.
"There are indications that he may come to Cochin," the source said on Monday. "We should have a confirmation in the next few days."
Cochin, a popular tourist town in the Indian Ocean state of Kerala, will hold the first of six one-dayers between India and Pakistan on April 2 at the conclusion of the ongoing three-Test series.
Indian Prime Minister Manmohan
A Pakistani woman who won international fame but irked the government for speaking out about her gang rape left for the United States yesterday to receive an award for her courage.
Mukhtar Mai, 36, has been declared Woman of the Year 2005 by Glamour, an American women’s magazine. She’s due to receive the award with a $20,000 cash prize Nov. 2 in New York.
Past winners include U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton and former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.
Mai braved social stigma by going public over her June 2002 assault, which was ordered by a village council in retaliation for her
The Pakistan government has lifted a foreign travel ban on the victim of a high profile gang rape, Mukhtar Mai.
But Ms Mai has told the BBC that because her passport has been confiscated, the move is meaningless.
The ban has prevented Ms Mai from taking up an invitation from human rights group Amnesty International to travel to the United States.
Officials had said she had to stay in Pakistan until court cases around the rape were resolved.
But critics said the move was a ploy intended to protect Pakistan's international image.
More: news.bbc.co.uk
After a stern protest by the Bush administration, Pakistan yesterday lifted travel restrictions imposed on a Pakistani gang-rape victim, freeing her to visit the United States for a series of high-profile speeches.
Mukhtar Mai earned international renown after she demanded the prosecution of men who had raped her on the orders of a traditional village council in June 2002. According to testimony, the council ordered the rape as punishment after Mai's teenage brother allegedly offended a powerful clan by having an affair with the sister of one of the accused men.
But last Friday, a court ordered the release of 12 men
