Musharraf barred travel by rape victim

[NNN0LHI]

http://in.rediff.com/news/2005/jun/17pak1.htm

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."

[icymist]

1. Nice friends, huh? n/t

[ovidsen]

2. At least the ban has been reversed.

Pakistan Wednesday lifted the travel ban after Mai appealed to Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz.

Of course, we'll all believe this when she actually arrives in the US.

[billbuckhead]

3. "Freedumbs on the march"

Mushariff regime and the Bush regime have much in common.

[Elidor]

4. Musharraf should be sentenced to be gang-raped

And then told afterward to STFU.