Islamabad: Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan has dismissed reports attributed to him that he held rape victims responsible for the crime committed against them.
“I would never say such a stupid thing,” said Imran Khan in an interview with PBS NewsHour, a popular late night US news programme.
“One who commits rape, solely and solely that person is responsible. So let’s be clear about that. No matter how provocative the woman is or whatever she wears, the person who commits rape is fully responsible. Never is the victim responsible,” said PM Khan while replying to a question of the interviewer Judy Woodruff.
My comments were deliberately taken completely out of context, said the prime minister while referring to his interview last month with HBO Axios.
“More than rape, there are child abuse cases which are going through the roof, so my comments were in that context,” explained Khan.
“And I have to say because I know all the interviews I have given. Never would I say such a stupid thing where a person who is raped is somehow responsible. It is always the rapist that is responsible,” said PM Khan.
Pakistani women treated with more respect
To a question by Woodruff whether because of Islam he was not taking a stronger stance for women, the prime minister said it was absolutely untrue.
“Islam gives dignity and respect to women,” he said, adding after traveling all over the world, he found that in the Muslim countries, women were treated with more respect.
“In Pakistan, even in other Muslim countries I have seen, women are treated with far more respect and given more dignity,” said Khan.
Last month, after an interview with HBO Axios’s Johnathan Swan, PM Imran Khan had come under fire for his remarks on the rising cases of sexual violence in Pakistan.
The prime minister spoke on an array of issues during that interview, ranging from military bases; the Afghan peace process, and Pakistan’s response to the coronavirus pandemic.
