Hello and welcome to the History Hour Podcast from the BBC World Service with me Max Pearson.

This week our personal stories from the past include the rise of a fascist movement in 1960s Britain.

What the hell was the British authorities thinking about

to allow these people to hold rallies into a focus square

was the English version of Hitler's rallies in Germany.

Also the Saudi author who shook up Arabic fiction in the early 2000s.

Because you know when you read books you have this urge to be in this world you are a citizen of the country called literature

And the terrible price paid by an abortion doctor in 1990s America.

My uncle was not ideologically motivated at all.

Like my uncle wasn't the Martin Luther King of abortion.

He felt it was his duty as a doctor.

All those stories explored by our team of dedicated historians who seek out the first-hand testimony

to bring them to life.

But we begin in Pakistan during the 1980s, a time when the law of the land appeared to do little to protect

women in rape cases. Fahana Haytha has been looking into this for us and Fahana this story focuses on a particularly upsetting case.

Hi Max yes it does it's a very harrowing case that involved a nearly blind teenage girl

Safia Bibi she was raped by two men who were her employers. She

subsequently became pregnant. Now she took these men to court but failed to

prove her rape and then as a result under this new legislation known as the

hooded ordinances she was then charged and found guilty of having sex outside

marriage now this verdict and the conviction not surprisingly

outraged the burgeoning women's rights movement in Pakistan. Safia Bibi's case

...