The illiterate father, who has a serious kidney ailment, has a daughter Zahida Parveen, who he says has been forced to marry one of her abductors his ``enemies'' he calls them.

Cases like these are common in Pakistan, where women and girls are the victims of undemocratic norms, policies and institutions.

Women are threatened, beaten and strangled. They have stove burst burns, are poisoned, or are left disfigured by acid thrown at them. Domestic violence is the biggest single cause of injury for women, accounting for more hospital admissions than rapes and road accidents.

During 1997, the independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) said, eight cases of sexual assault were reported every 24 hours, while the incidence of missing women and ``abduction'' was even higher.

Lawyers and activists blamePakistan's feudal society where men consider women their property and ill-treat them with no fear of punishment.

Addressing a rally last week in Lahore, Nigar Ahmed, director of the Aurat Foundation, said ``Women are not seen as human beings''. Some 2,000 people participated in the rally organised on World Human Rights Day -- the biggest women's rally seen in Pakistan -- to protest continued violence and abuse of women and girls.

The December 10 march in Lahore, capital of Punjab, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's home province, was an impressive and inspiring sight with participants from all over Punjab -- from women's organisations, grassroots groups, trade unions and four political parties.

Women carrying infants on bony hips marched along carrying placards and banners denouncing violence against women. Groups chanted slogans against forced marriages, domestic violence and ``black laws'' -- violative of fundamental rights. ``Please tell the photographers not to publish our pictures in papers,'' onewoman said. ``Our men will beat us up. They are very zalim (cruel).'' Women's groups have been campaigning for the repeal of Islamic zina -- when women who marry without their parents permission can be taken into custody -- and hudood laws concerning rape, under which a woman has to produce witnesses to register a case of rape. The ordinances are a legacy of Pakistan's martial rule past. A commission of inquiry headed by a supreme court judge had said the laws were in direct conflict with Islam, Pakistan's constitution and the country's commitments at the international level.

HRCP, the rights watchdog, has urged its repeal in successive reports saying that enforcing human rights was the primary responsibility of the government. However the present Sharif government has done nothing. Earlier in the year, Information Minister Mushahid Hussain had said his government was planning to review the hudood laws after consultation with representatives of women's organisation.

Instead the government has moved tomake the Koran and Sunnah (Islamic traditions) the supreme law of Pakistan. Women's groups say the proposed Shariah Bill will lead to the trampling of women's rights.

Women's groups have had to fight hard for rights under a rigidly patriarchal system that draws its legitimacy from society and a narrow interpretation of Islam. The right to marry according to their own wishes is one of the most contentious. Denied to the vast majority of Pakistani women, many have been killed by male family members for daring to defy the wishes of the family. Feuds have lasted for generations over such relationships, and have claimed many victims over the years.