As part of my professional research on gender-based violence, I recently inter-viewed community members in the Sialkot region about honour killings. I was shocked when different people shared with me in hushed tones six cases in which women — wives, sisters and daughters — had been killed by their very own families.
These accounts, spanning different time periods, were narrated by people who had themselves failed to report the matter to police because they feared possible consequences.
The pattern across all the six cases was chillingly consistent: women were killed without mercy, no matter the blood relation, and the perpetrators faced no punishment. Today, these men continue to live freely in society, their crimes hidden under the weight of power politics and a corrupt social fabric. None of these women’s names made it to the headlines. None of their stories reached the courts. And none of their killers faced justice.
The laws against honour killings, passed with great fanfare in 2016, have changed little on the ground because legal provisions still allow families to forgive their own relatives. Police prefer ‘settlement’ over prosecution. Courts look away. Governments remain in eternal slumber.
Honour has become a shield for impunity, and justice remains out of reach. If the state truly intends to protect its citizens, honour killings must be prosecuted as murder, without any compromise or forgiveness. Until then, the women of Sialkot, and countless others across Pakistan, will continue to die unheard, while their killers live ‘honourable’ lives.
AFIFA SHAHID
LAHORE
