ISLAMABAD - Representatives of various civic society organisations and women rights activists have expressed concerns over increase in cyber crimes against women and urged the government to introduce strong legislation to combat this emerging new menace against women. The civil society activists, information & communication technologies (ICT) experts and cyber & software professionals strongly condemned the increasingly incidents of cyber crimes against women in Pakistan in connection with the occasion of 16 Days of Activism to End Violence Against Women. The representatives of Pakistan Soft Ware Houses Association for IT & ITES (P@SHA), Internet Service Providers Association of Pakistan (ISPAK), Violence Against Women Watch Group and Aurat Foundation expressed these views while addressing a press conference at National Press Club here on Friday. They said that there was enough evidence that large number of Pakistani girls and women were being victimized in cyber crimes, including cyber stalking, cyber pornography and morphing through the internet and mobile cell phones. They further said that You Tube, Face book, mobile SMS as well as MMS have become the common means to exploit innocent women especially students. Self-manufactured manipulated videos of women through cut and paste are disseminated and loaded into You Tube and other sites that immeasurably hurt young Pakistani girls who have to face subsequent loss of personal liberty, mobility, recreation and are deprived of educational, employment and marital opportunities leading to social boycott and parental censure, they maintained. The speakers said that cyber crimes against women had added to the plight of Pakistani women who already had to face other violent crimes in Pakistani society like domestic violence, honour killings, compensation, swara, vanni, watta satta and Quran marriages. They demanded the government to chalk out new legislation preventing cyber crimes against women with effective action plans, implementation and enforcement with preventive measures. The representatives also showed their reservations about the new drafted bill Prevention of Electronic Crimes Ordinance, 2007 (PECO 2007) about which they said that General Pervez Musharraf originally promulgated it in 2007 with a mala fide intention to curb civil liberties. They said that the proposed bill carried massive violations of fundamental human rights, illegal interference into privacy, sweeping arbitrary powers of investigation and prosecution given to FIA, vague definitions, huge lacunas in Section 13 (dealing with cyber-stalking), disproportional severe penalties including death penalty, the misuse of the Pakistan Telecom (Reorganization) Act 1996 and the Electronic Transaction Ordinance 2002. They added that the bill also overlapped and conflicted with the certain Sections of the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC). They demanded of the government to revise and rectify the proposed draft of PECO while taking board on ICT experts as well as professionals, human rights activists and civil society. The speakers at the end presented their six points agenda before the government proposing that the proposed Cyber Crimes Bill (PECO) should be opened for public debate and discussion, new provisions dealing with cyber crimes against women should be inserted in the draft and strong legislation on ICT- related privacy and confidentiality should be enacted. They proposed that government should establish an ICT tribunal headed by a Supreme Court judge and sign as well as ratify the relevant international agreements and conventions including CoE (the Council of Europe) Convention on Human Rights, the CoE Convention on Data Protection, the CoE Convention on Cyber Crime (Budapist Convention 2002) and UN/ITU Global Cyber Security Agenda 2007.