In Pakistan, women’s activists and human rights groups are condemning a so-called “compromise” on plans to change the country’s rape laws. Under current law, rape victims are liable to be prosecuted for adultery unless they can produce four male witnesses. An effort to change that law was set back this week after the government accepted demands from religious conservatives to keep rape under Islamic law rather than strictly the criminal system. Asma Jahangir, chairwoman of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, said: “They have hoodwinked women into believing that this is a law for the protection of women. It is a law for the protection of religious extremists.”