Bina Shah: Pakistani women save three kidnapped Baloch girls
This tweet from renowned columnist Cyril Almeida flashed across my Twitter timeline on October 16, alerting me to the terrible case of 3 young girls kidnapped and trafficked to a “feudal lord” in Larkana, northern Sindh.
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According to the report in The News,
Fourteen-year-old Sabeena, 10-year Nageena and 10-year Soorat were kidnapped in Banghoria Goth in Azizabad and taken to the private jail.
According to police sources, an influential feudal lord of the Shikarpur district was behind the trafficking of the girls.
They said the local police did not dare raid the private jail because “the law of the jungle still prevails in the interior of Sindh”.
A large number of people, including the parents and relatives of the girls, staged a protest demonstration in front of the Karachi Press Club on Thursday, and demanded of the Sindh government to rescue them.
They deplored that the government had maintained a criminal silence on the trafficking incident because two influential feudal lords of the Jatoi clan had been protecting the culprits.
I have written much about how women in the rural areas of Sindh are trapped by patriarchy. My short story “Snakebite” about the kidnapping and rape of a young girl on a farm in Sindh, and another short story, “The Wedding of Sundri,” about a child marriage that ends in honor killing, capture these realities. Feudalism as well know as a cover for these crimes, often committed by petty thugs and criminals who then boast of their connections to the “feudal lords” and seek their shelter once their crimes are exposed.
(The word “wadera” - big man - which most people mistake for the feudal lord is never used to refer to the most important zamindars, but rather the underlings and thugs who bask in the reflected glory of the zamindar, and may not even have much to do with the zamindar on a day to day basis.)
But in truth, these kinds of travesties take place in Pakistan every day, in the villages, the cities, the small towns, and everywhere in between. Sadly, nowhere is this more true than in upper Sindh, where tribal customs meet feudal power, where there is no rule of law, and there are no-go areas where the police have no sway or are in cahoots with the criminals. I would be glad to see the end of these customs and crimes, as they are a violation of human rights which blight our nation.
The prognosis for the three girls was grim. There have been many kidnappings of young girls, especially Hindu girls, forced to convert, in Sindh. The Sindhi columnist Veengas wrote a story just a few days ago called "Who Killed And Raped Hawa Menghar?" Hindu girls are at even more risk of abuse because of their vulnerable status as both girls and minorities. Would the three girls, said to be from Baloch tribes settled in upper Sindh, eventually meet the same fate?
Not this time.
Morial Shah, a well-known Sindhi Cambridge-educated lawyer, tweeted about what happened next in this case. She writes:
Veteran rights activist, Amar Sindhu, brought the case of 3 kidnapped (/trafficked) Baloch girl children to my notice yesterday… Our reports suggested that the kidnappers/traffickers were holding the girls in Shikarpur’s marshy katcho area.With the intervention of my aunt @ShahNafisa](https://twitter.com/ShahNafisa), rights advocates’ efforts & help from police+locals, the girls are now in the State’s custody.
I went to Amar Sindhu’s Facbeook page to find out more about the case, and here is what happened according to this famous Sindhi human rights activist - she’d filled her Facebook page with updates over several days, first reporting about the kidnapping of the girls, and providing relevant phone numbers of the police and army colonel who were involved in investigating the case.
Not only was the feudal, Sardar Ibrahim Jatoi, from an influential political family with links to the ruling party, but the colonel from the Rangers claimed the girls were residing in Jatoi’s custody under their own free will (what nonsense). Meanwhile, the families of the girls grew desperate and approached PPP MNA Shahida Rahmani, who heard the details of the case and then made a phone call to Nafisa Shah, another PPP MNA and the daughter of Sindh’s Chief Minister Qaim Ali Shah. The Chief Minister then ordered an SSP to enter the “beggar camp” in the Khanpur area of Shikarpur, to start the investigations properly and bring them to a satisfactory conclusion.
Within hours the girls were recovered from Jatoi’s custody, and were turned over to the Sukkar police. Even better, they appeared in court in front of a first additional sessions judge and gave statements that they had been kidnapped by Sadam Jakhrani, who then sold out to Imam Bux Jatoi and Saleem Jatoi.
(I suspect that these two, feeling the heat of the families’ protests, gave the girls over to the Sardar, as the most influential man in the area and as someone traditionally called upon to settle disputes, fearing that they’d be caught. The Sardar most probably was holding the girls in his custody to “safeguard” them but was not letting them go. This is quite typical in cases like these, where the police and courts’ authority clashes with that of the Sardar’s. Thus cases pertaining to the rights of women often become mixed up with political struggles and infights.)
This is a fantastic outcome, not just for those three girls, who will be reunited with their families. But it teaches us something very important: that when it comes to the rights and safety of women and girls, the only people who can really help them is other women. Men do not place a priority on these cases, and will sympathize with the men rather than the girls. It took three women, well-placed and well-connected within the feudal system, which is intertwined with our political system all over Pakistan, to free those girls. The sardars and the zamindars and the colonels and the ministers can only be made to see the wrong in the existing system by women, who may or may not be privileged, but who certainly are more concerned for the plight of their sisters, and will speak up on their behalf.
In Pakistan, patriarchy is the real religion, where men take the place of gods, and women and girls are their worshippers, slaves, and prisoners. Only women can dismantle this system, with the help of their male allies and comrades.
