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June 28, 2006

Pakistan: Muslim Child Brides, Aged From One To Five Years

I thought my last article was shocking, concerning a 13 year old girl being sold in marriage, but I should be immune to shock by now. We have covered extensively the Pakistani custom of "vani" marriages, where girls are given away in marriage as a form of "compensation", where a male relative has committed a crime. Vani marriage became illegal at the start of last year, along with honour killings. The case which had provoked the law to be changed occurred in 2004, where a three year old girl was given in marriage to a sixty year old man.

We have covered cases of girls as young as one years old, and marriages of girls who have not even been born.

Earlier this month, a case in Sindh province involved two girls aged six and eight, who were given away in vani marriage in exchange for the loss of payment for three buffaloes.

Sometimes the reasons for a vani marriage are because the girl's brother has eloped with a girl from another family. But often, the vani marriages happen to settle cases where a murder has been committed.

The life of a vani bride is unhappy for more than the fact that her choices have been removed, and that she becomes a victim of sexual abuse while under age. The mere fact that she has been offered as a compensation package for the crime of another member of her family causes her to be treated with contempt by the family she is married into.

In Punjab province in the east of Pakistan, and SIndh in the southeast, the word vani is commonly applied for such marriages. In the Pashtun regions of North-West Frontier Province, the custom is called swara. Where vani is ordered by a village court called a panchayat, swara marriage is ordered by a similar "court", called a jirga. Pashtun communities place a high value upon vengeance, or "badal", and thus the swara bride can often represent to her new family a reminder of feuds, or the murder of a relative. Anthropologist Samar Minallah states that the swara bride is often mistreated by her new "family". She says: "They are treated like enemies."

Today, the BBC reports that Pakistan's highest constitutional court has moved to annul the marriages of five girls, who were given away in vani marriage in Kashmoor district, Sindh province, at the start of this month.

The girls are not even old enough to go to school. The youngest is aged one, and the eldest is aged five years. The BBC does not mention the actual "crime" which warranted the ruling of a jirga, saying only that it was an "alleged" misdeed carried out by two brothers, the fathers of the five girls.
The girls were given away in vani to another family, which had been in conflict with their relatives since 1997.

We wrote of this case on June 11, as it involved a minister in the provincial government. This man, Dr Sohrab Sarki, Sindh Minister for Inter-Provincial Coordination, had apparently attended the jirga which took place in his brother's house.

The jirga was apparently headed by a former member of the National Assembly and member of the Pakistan People's Party, Mir Hazar Khan Bijarani. There is a dispute over who actually presided over the jirga, the National Assembly politician or Akbar Banglani, a local government official. Banglani had earlier claimed that there was a meeting, not a jirga, and it had been arranged to bring conciliation between two rival families. The jirga took place in the village of Garhi Hassan Sarki, Jacobabad, near Sukkur, on June 7.

The Nation states that the reason for the girls being given away stems from a murder of a woman and a man, which had happened in 1997. Italian news agency AKI has more details on the case, and says that the feud began following the death of Miandad Banglani. The killing was committed during a shootout between the clans of Hafiz Qamaruddin and Yar Ali Banglani, over an honour killing which had taken place.

The police only registered a case nine years after the event, and that had happened after the issue became highlighted on local television. Yar Ali Banglani had then been arrested. The anthropologist Samar Minallah had brought the case to court.

The "resolution" verdict attained by the jirga had ordered both clans to be fined 1 million rupee (over 16,000 dollars), and for the five girls to be handed over in vani to the relatives of Miandad Banglani.. The girls were Aamna, aged 5 and Bashiran, aged 2, daughters of a man called Rahmatullah, who had attended the jirga and gave evidence in the court. Also given away were the daughters of Hafeezullah, Shehzadi, aged 6 and Meerzadi aged 2. The daughter of Yar Ali Banglani, 3-year old Noor Bano, was the fifth.

Pakistan's Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry ordered that police should provide protection to journalists who had reported on the case. He also ordered the head of police in the district to conduct an inquiry into the jirga, and to arrest the individual who had presided over the ruling, be it the politician Mir Hazar Khan Bijarani or a village leader. The results of the inquiry must be presented within two weeks.

Two village leaders who had attended the jirga were present in the court, Peer Bharchoondi Mian Abdul Khalique and Akbar Banglani. Yar Ali gave evidence in the trial in a statement that his daughter had been ordered as compensation in the jirga.

Sindh province Chief Minister Arbab Ghulam Rahim officially overturned the weddings, saying that they were "immoral, un-Islamic and illegal".

The chief justice at the supreme court said at the hearing that "vani" appeared to be spreading across the whole country.

The same court had dealt with the case involving the girls who had been given away as compensation for three buffaloes. In that case, a local feudal lord named Imdad Sithar in the southern town of Shirkapur had given the buffaloes to a villager named Mohammad Ramzan Sithar, his cousin. Ramzan was expected to pay the feudal leader, but failed to do so. A jirga was arranged in Shikarpur which ordered that Ramzan should pay 170,000 rupees (2,833 dollars) or give his daughters in marriage to Sithar. The girls were aged six and eight.

Ramzan agrred to comply with the order, but the children's grandmother, Rani Begum, refused to allow the matter to rest. She would not let the girls go to their new "husband". She told reporters: "No one can take my grandchildren from me."

The judge ordered a judicial inquiry into the jirga which decided the lives of two small children were equivalent in value to three buffaloes. According to AKI, the amount of buffaloes was eleven, the the girls were Heer, aged 9, and Karima, aged 1.

Vani was made officially illegal at the start of last year. We have documented many cases, and it should be noted that the law states that the maximum penalty for giving someone away in vani marriage is a prison sentence of ten years. In the seventeen months that the law has come into effect, there has not been a single conviction for vani crime.

Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at June 28, 2006 10:47 PM

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Posted by: Always On Watch at June 30, 2006 7:04 AM

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