In a 6 June, 2002 story (released by the Chinese Press Agency, Xinhua), the Shanghai Star carried the headline: "Pakistani mother vows to defend raped daughter", and reported that Shiraka Bibi's daughter Zafran was languishing on death row with her young baby, born after the result of being repeatedly raped by her brother-in-law. According to the report, Zafran was married to Naimat Khan (jailed for life for murder in 1992) in an arranged marriage 13 years ago. Zafran then became the victim of repeated sexual abuse by her brother-in-law. But the law offered her no protection, as she was unable to prove rape by producing the required four male witnesses, and was instead found guilty of adultery. No action has been taken against her alleged attacker and Zafran has appealed her conviction in the federal Shariah court, the highest Islamic court. If Zafran loses her appeal, she will be stoned to death under the Islamic Hadud ordinance.
This case poignantly illustrates the extreme injustice born my women in Pakistan. Under the Islamic laws introduced by former military dictator General Mohammad Zia-ul-Haq in 1979, the responsibility of proving rape rests with the victim (which incredulously requires the testimony of four male witnesses), otherwise she will be punished for adultery. "How is it possible for a woman to bring four witnesses to prove that she has been raped?" asks Aneesa Zeb, a women's rights activist and lawyer in the northwestern city of Peshawar. In fact, if a man rapes a woman in the presence of several women, he cannot be convicted under the Hudood Ordinances because women are not permitted to testify. Similarly, if a Muslim man rapes a Parsi, Hindu or Christian woman in the presence of other (Parsi, Hindu or Christian) men and women, he cannot be convicted because non-Muslim witnesses cannot testify.
Since all consensual extramarital sexual relations are considered violations of the Hudood Ordinances, if a woman cannot prove the absence of consent (i.e. rape or sexual abuse), there is the danger that she may be charged with a violation of the Hudood ordinances for fornication or adultery, for which the maximum punishment is public flogging or death by stoning.
Commenting on Zafran's plight, Afrasiab Khattak (of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) said: "Zafran Bibi's case is not the first and the last one under this law and more Zafran Bibis will suffer as long as this law remains on the statute book". She went on to note how because of such laws, "Men are often bailed out and if the women are complainants, they are turned into accused" . In its recent 2001 report, the independent HRCP estimates that one woman in Pakistan is raped every two hours, but most sexual assaults go unreported because of the impossibility of being able to prove the charges. In the country's most populous province of Punjab, the HRCP states that one woman is raped every six hours and a woman gang-raped every fourth day, yet only 321 cases were reported to police in the previous year.
Even some police officials admit that in a majority of rape cases the victims are pressured to drop rape charges because of the threat of Hudood adultery charges being brought against them. This allows rape, (and gang rape in particular), to be commonly used as a means of social control by landlords and local criminal bosses seeking to humiliate and terrorize local residents. The police rarely respond to such attacks, and may even participate in them.
According to the Commission of Inquiry for Women, laws on adultery and rape have been subject to widespread misuse, with 95 percent of the women accused of adultery being found innocent either in the court of first instance or on appeal. However, by that time, the woman may have spent months in jail, suffering sexual abuse at the hands of the police, and the destruction of her reputation. The Commission found that the main victims of the Hudood laws are poor women who are unable to defend themselves against slanderous charges. The laws also have been used by husbands and other male family members to punish their wives and female relatives for reasons having nothing to do with sexual propriety.
As many as 40-50% of the women in jails in cities like Lahore, Peshawar, and Mardan await trial for adultery, but according to some human rights monitors, 80 percent of all adultery-related Hudood cases are filed without any supporting evidence. But even when acquitted, the trauma for the woman may not end, because they then become vulnerable to attack for a so-called "honour killing", where male relatives murder women they accuse of immoral behaviour. According to human rights observers, honour killings are rampant in Pakistan's feudal-dominated rural and tribal areas - a 1998 HRCP report citing 1,600 cases of such killings in that year.
Although there are numerous reports of women killed or mutilated by male relatives who suspect them of adultery, few such cases are investigated seriously and those who are arrested are usually acquitted on the grounds that they were "provoked," or for a lack of witnesses. While the tradition of killing those suspected of illicit sexual relations in so-called "honor killings", in order to restore tribal or family honor (which is known as "karo-kari" in Sindh), applies equally to offending men and women, women are far more likely to be killed than men, and cases have been reported from every province in Pakistan. Honour killings have also been triggered by a woman found conversing, or sharing a joke or light moment, with a man who wasn't a relative. A woman who is perceived as being "disobedient" to her husband or the husband's family may also fall victim to an honor killing, or may be badly battered, burned by fire, or disfigured by acid attacks. Human Rights advocates charge that there have been countless instances of such "honor killings" similar to the two-hundred and fifty women who were burned to death in their homes in 1997 in the city of Lahore, of which only six cases led to arrest.
The Commission of Inquiry for Women cited newspapers from Lahore which reported an average of 15 cases of stove deaths per month during a 6-month period in 1997; most of the victims were young married women. The Commission noted that many such cases are not reported by hospitals and, even when they are, the police are reluctant to investigate or file charges. Dowry demands are also factors in such killings.
The 1979 Hudood Ordinances abolished punishment for raping one's wife. Thus, marital rape is not a crime. Since marriage registration (nikah) sometimes occurs years before a marriage is consummated (rukh sati), the nikah (nonconsummated) marriage is regarded as a formal marital relationship. In one 1996 case, a 13-year-old girl, whose nikah had been performed but rukh sati had not taken place, decided to divorce her husband. The husband kidnaped the girl, raped her, and then released her. The police refused to register a rape case arguing that they were a married couple.
In rural areas, the practice of a woman "marrying the Koran" is widely accepted if the family cannot arrange a suitable marriage or wants to keep the family wealth intact. A woman "married to the Koran" is forbidden to have any contact with males over 14 years of age, including her immediate family members. In inheritance cases women generally do not receive--or are pressed to surrender the share of the inheritance they are legally due. Under the Hadood laws, the testimony of a woman is not admissible in cases involving Hadd punishments, and in other cases, the testimony of two women is seen as equivalent to that of one man. For instance, a woman's testimony regarding financial matters is not admissible unless corroborated by another woman. Hadood laws are also used to intimidate and oppress women sold into prostitution
According to the Parliamentary Commission, women in some tribal areas were intimidated into not voting during the 1997 elections. Announcements were made on mosque loudspeakers that voting by women was un-Islamic and women going to polling stations risked having their houses burned down. As a result, no more than 37 women (out of 6,600 registered to vote) actually cast ballots in Jamrud, in the Khyber Agency. It is therefore little surprise that only six women held seats in the last 217-member National Assembly, (up from 4 in the previous Parliament).
Women's literacy trails that of men, and according to some reports, female literacy rates may be as low as 2 percent in some areas of rural Sindh and Baluchistan. Participation of women in the workforce is also much lower than in Sri Lanka or India.
Although there is gender inequity and discrimination throughout the subcontinent, the plight of women in Pakistan can be especially traumatic since not only do women face tremendous social pressures, Islamic Laws systematize onerous and intense legal burdens on women. Even as women's rights activists and progressive trade union activists fight a valiant battle for social change, their task is made much more difficult due to restrictions on political activity and limitations on the press. Frequent bouts of military dictatorship have made the work of activists trying to bring about gender equality in Pakistani society especially challenging.
Women are thus paying an especially high price for the US's support of dictatorial regimes in Pakistan who have cynically allied with the most regressive of the Islamist forces to inflict highly discriminatory Islamic Hadood laws on Pakistan's hapless women. The perverse logic of the two-nation theory that has propelled Pakistan towards "Islamic Purity" continues to hang as a very heavy burden on those trying to bring about greater social justice in Pakistan.
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source:www.members.tripod.com
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