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April 6, 2006

Pakistan: Muslim Rape Fatwa Victim Fears For Her Life

We mentioned earlier the case of Mukhtar Mai (pictured left), the woman who, in June 2002, was ordered by a Muslim village court to be gang-raped for a crime that was not of her own doing. The reasons for the fatwa came from the fact that her 12-year old brother had been seen walking with a girl near their home, in the remote village of Meerwala Jatoi in Punjab province, Pakistan. Her brother was walking with a girl from the influential Mastoi tribe, and thus had broken local custom and had offended the girl's "honour".

To achieve the suitable redemption of the other girl's "honour", the court ordered that Mukhtar Mai should be gang-raped. Four volunteers enacted this "punishment" and once the ordeal was over, she was then displayed naked to onlookers, who numbered in their hundreds.

The case sent shockwaves throughout Pakistan, and she managed to get some form of justice. Six of those involved in the rape were given a death sentence, and Mukhtar Mai was given compensation. She used the money to build a school in her village. Though what happened to Mukhtar Mai was terrible, she was lucky in that she survived and saw the perpetrators of the crime brought before the courts. Eight individuals who had colluded in her ordeal were acquitted.

However, according to the Pakistan Times of March 6 this year, the death sentences which were given to the six individuals were annulled, and they were acquitted on Thursday, March 2. Mukhtar Mai announced that she would be appealing to the Supreme Court against this decision.

"My life is in danger, I am receiving death threats but I am more worried about my family. I and my family need government's protection," she said. "Although I am facing threats from my attackers, I will not leave my village and country."

The reason why the court in Multan acquitted the six men, state human rights groups, is that the authorities failed to protect witnesses, so the men's appeals were upheld. During the appeal, Mukhar Mai tried to have the acquittals of the eight men from the earlier trial reversed, but the court refused this.

According to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, there were at least 151 cases of gang-rape and 176 women killed in the name of "honour" in the first seven months of 2004 alone.

Now, according to the Pakistan Daily Times, it appears that her life is being threatened by individuals more influential than the thugs from her village. On Tuesday the New York Times columnist Nicholas D Kristof said: "There is a good chance that Mukhtar Mai will be murdered." He said that, because Mukhtar Mai's celebrated status highlights the dark side of Pakistan, President Musharraf "is leading an effort to bully her into silence. The authorities confiscate Mukhtar's mail and feed vicious propaganda to sympathetic journalists, portraying her as a liar, a cheat and an unpatriotic dope of India (and of me)."

He stated that a leading police official has threatened to have her imprisoned for fornication, to discredit and silence her.

Dr Amna Buttar, a US citizen and human rights worker, who often translates for Mukhtar Mai, was quoted as saying that in a planned visit to New York by Mukhtar Mai, an associate of the president told her "We can do anything... We can just pay a little money to some black guys in New York and get people killed there."

Dr Buttar confirmed the claims to the Daily Star. Mukhtar Mai is still active in campaigning for women's rights. On March 8 she led a march of 3,000 women, demanding equal rights.

The custom of panchayat justice, that meted out by a village court or jirga has seen horrific judgements, such as the decree that we described in November that five young women should be raped,, abducted or killed for not honouring marriages arranged in 1996 when they were children. The marriages had been arranged by a jirga as part of a compensation for a crime committed by an adult male relative, who had shot a man.

This custom of giving away female relatives to resolve disputes is called vani, and at its most extreme, in 2004 a three year old girl became betrothed to a 60 year old man. This led to vani and honor killings being officially outlawed, though in practise, this rule is rarely observed in village communities.

According to an article originally in the New York Times in 2002, the panchayat customs have been allowed as an abrogation of state responsibliity from interfering in "domestic" matters. When General Zia ul-Haq ruled Pakistan between 1977 and 1988, he brought in many laws which aimed to Islamicise the country. This included Pakistan's dire blasphemy laws, introduced in 1986.

One law, introduced during Zia's dictatorship in 1979, removed the distinction between adultery and rape. This meant that a private offense, such as adultery became a criminal offense. At the same time, it ensured that in cases of rape, the burden of proof relies on the victim proving innocence. As both adultery and rape require four witnesses to establish a crime, a woman who claims she has been raped is in effect admitting to adultery, and is often charged and subsequently jailed.

The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) announced last month that during 2005, there were 6,000 women and children held in Pakistani prisons. 80 percent of the women in jail are being held under so-called "hudud" ordinances, with the largest number facing charges of adultery.

The "Hudud" ordinances or "Hudood Ordinances" were introduced in 1979 under Zia's term of dictatorship. These rules are "limitations imposed by Allah" and relate to Islamic law. In May 2004, Pervez Musharraf announced that he would review the hudud laws, and introduce an official human rights body. The MMA, the opposition coalition of six Islamist parties, has strongly opposed any tampering with these laws. Sharia law is Allah's law, and inviolable.

The NYT stated that in 1981, the hudud ordinance of stoning to death was challenged before the federal Shariah court (one branch of Pakistan's labyrinthine legal system), and the majority of those on the bench opposed it. However, political pressure ensured that the law was reinstated.

Increasingly since 2002, justice has being handed over to jirgas for cases of justice, and women's rights are neglected by these fiercely traditional bodies, who regard women as less valuable than men.

Since the NYT article was written, a phenomenon has emerged which is highly disturbing - the acid attacks upon women. According to the Electric Paper, the Pakistan Human Rights Commission states that 400 women are victims of acid attacks every year. In Bangladesh, according to the Acid Survivors' Foundation, there were 268 cases of acid attacks, mainly upon women, in 2005.

In rural areas of Pakistan, these cases happen because a woman may be infertile, a marriage proposal is rejected, there may be suspicion by in-laws, or suspicions of extra-marital affairs.

In the matter of so-called "honor killings", an average of 1,000 women die every year but, according to the HRCP report, in many instances, these cases are never reported. Musharraf did manage to have a law passed in late 2004 making it possible to give jail terms for honor crimes and vani, and the law came into effect in early 2005. However, this law did not remove a provision called "compoundability", where a man who killed a woman, could settle out of court by paying compensation to the victim's relatives. Often the murderers are relatives of the victim, however, and according to HCRP, this provision allowed killers to escape "scot-free".

Today's Daily Times reports the case of a woman, Jindo Mai, who was kidnapped, held captive, and gang-raped over several days as a "punishment". The crime was that her brother was thought to have eloped with one of the kidnapper's daughter.

While crimes such as this continue, where a woman can be raped because, like Jindo Mai or like Mukhtar Mai, a brother is seen to have contravened local custom, then Pakistan is a nation which should be pressured from all quarters to join the 21st century and abide by common standards of human decency.

Keywords: Hudood Ordinance, Hudood Ordinances

Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at April 6, 2006 8:01 PM

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