At Hall Road, Habib Jalib started reading his poetry and one of the protesters, Mubaraka, of the Democratic Women's Association managed to slip through the cordon and signaled other activists to follow her.
[8] This was compounded by General Zia regime's moves to reduce women's rights using Pakistan's Sharia laws which were called the Hudood ordinances.
[9] According to Anis Haroon, when they held solidarity demonstrations at Jinnah Mausoleum in Karachi against the treatment given to women at the Lahore March, the police did not beat them but molvis claimed that their actions annulled nikah (marriages).
[9] According to Rahat Imran, a documentary film 'Jaloos' narrated by then contemporary activist Mehnaz Rafi, records the 1988 procession and also recounts the continuation of protests each 12 February on the same route since 1983.
[17] Pakistan's print media, Government controlled and private, was heavily pressured by the biased gate keeping of the General Zia Ul Haq regime through agencies like the National Press Trust.
Khan says there were some other Urdu and English news papers too published material terming protests to be sacrilegious, effectively closing doors on possibilities of open debate regarding the Islamic law.
[19] According to Ayesha Khan while discriminatory laws from Zia times are still on the statute but positive development is issues of women's rights are getting politicized and coming into focus since then.