If you are a woman living in Pakistan, it might be an idea to brush up on a spot of self-defense. We are all familiar with the reasons, which are borne out by a survey conducted about three years ago by the Thomson Reuters Foundation. That survey concluded that Pakistan is the sixth most dangerous country in the world for women, with India the first, and the USA the tenth.
These results should not come as a surprise for a country with a regional history of ‘honour killings’ (it is high time that phrase was changed) dating back thousands of years, a practice that thrives to this day. These ‘honour killings,’ as a result of which women, who are accused of adultery, are killed by the men of the family to maintain the family’s ‘honour’, are just one among the many forms of violence committed against women in Pakistan. In other forms, women are routinely abused, injured and killed, following domestic violence and rape.
Justice is meant to be blind. The law should apply across the board. But does it? People are concerned that when a person from a well-to-do family commits a crime, he or she gets away with it. They’re trying to prevent that from happening in this case. But how about when the victim is poor, destitute and friendless, perhaps old, or belonging to some other religion…and once again, poor.?
The clerics seem to be making the situation worse in every way. There’s little point in enlarging on that theme. As for the Prime Minister of the country, he has had this to say regarding the prevalent attitude against women in this country: “If a woman is wearing very few clothes it will have an impact, it will have an impact on the men, unless they’re robots.” The prime minister said, “I mean it’s common sense.”
It is not just the Prime Minister who holds such views although not everyone has such a penchant for speaking without first weighing their words; he also has liberal access to air-conditioned environments where he lives with his walking tent. No, this mindset is easily available across society where people believe that despite the heat, and despite the amount of work they must do, women must cover themselves from head to foot at all times– leaving men to go exactly where their lecherous minds take them.
There are thousands of such incidents against women that never make the news, and only a fraction that are prosecuted, and action is taken in another fraction of those.
It all starts pretty early in a woman’s life. To speak of a handful of recent cases, there was the case of a six-year-old girl who was kidnapped, sexually assaulted and killed in Karachi last month. Her body was later found dumped in the garbage.
Also last month was the case of a little girl, a student of Class 8, who was abducted and sexually assaulted by a group of men in Rawalpindi. She, mercifully, was rescued.
And last month, a 14-year-old girl was kidnapped and assaulted for about three days, but she too was rescued.
There was also a 15-year-old girl raped in Toba Tek Singh in June, and in May there was the case of a bride being gangraped by four men in Multan.
Again, last month, a Filipina, who had come to Pakistan to earn some money, was raped in Lahore.
A young couple was stripped and assaulted by a man, with other men present in the room. A video was recorded showing this.
These are only some of the cases that made the news, and they took place within a period of two months. It is the tip of an iceberg that goes way down.
Some activists stand up on behalf of these abused women, prominent among them Asma Jehangir who is now no longer with us. The rest of society, much of it, condemns it, but it has become a way of life, something that a large segment of the country takes for granted: women are property and can be dealt with as the male segment of society wishes.
There are however some cases that catch the limelight. Such as the recent tragic, and terrible murder of Noor Mukadam, which hit the news and social media like a meteorite on fire. As it should. May God help her family in this time of extreme need.
There is no need to go into the details. The victim lost her life in circumstances which will never be forgotten. The thought of what her family must go through is painful beyond endurance. The person responsible for her murder should face justice.
The point of this column is that nothing speaks of the massive gulf that exists in this country as this tragic case does.
There is that huge segment of society, where hundreds if not more, every single year, women lose their lives to murderers, rapists and other predators such as male members of the family. A fraction of these cases make the news as pointed out above. The rest not only do not make the news they go unreported because of that sickening sentiment ‘Log kiya kahen gay’ (what will people say).
For the very, very small number of cases such as Noor’s, her awful fate made the news like only the cases of our ‘elite’ manage to do.
Why do other victims never get as much coverage? Why do they never produce as much outrage as this crime did, when in terms of tragedy they are all on a par with each other? Where are the processions, petitions and outrage on social media for them?
This outrage stems from a fraction of the literate segment of society, and you wish that this segment was equally outraged across the board.
One can live with one person getting away with affording a better sofa than the other, or getting a better higher education than another, but we are talking about a person’s life here. The life of a mother, a daughter or a sister. A human being who lived and breathed and loved and worked. One of God’s Creations.
Justice is meant to be blind. The law should apply across the board. But does it? People are concerned that when a person from a well-to-do family commits a crime, he or she gets away with it. They’re trying to prevent that from happening in this case. But how about when the victim is poor, destitute and friendless, perhaps old, or belonging to some other religion…and once again, poor.?
We need justice for such people in Pakistan too, but there doesn’t seem to be any…what is being done to change this?
