Cowasjee pulls no punches as usual. Anyone who wants to help, can e mail the address mentioned in the last paragraph.
http://www.dawn.com/weekly/cowas/cowas.htm
By Ardeshir Cowasjee
The majority of the politicians who form what is known, in parliament, as the opposition, toothless but corrupt, endlessly seeking power and pelf, capable in their immobility of desk-thumping with remarkable stamina but incapable of mobility such as protest marches, have now come up with a new form of protest - lolling around on roadsides observing a ‘token hunger strike’. What is it? A couple of hours’ deprivation of puris, halwa, nihari and lassi? Is this all they can do while among the people of the country who they represent distress multiplies?
On an average of every second day - with no exaggeration - we read a news item in the press reporting a murder, or murders, committed under the vicious immoral practice known to us as karo-kari, which translates falsely and dishonourably into the term ‘honour killings’. On September 9, a press report in The Nation, which should have been unbelievable but which we know is not, told us that in the past eight months 631 victims of these convenient ‘honour killings’, six of them minors, were ritualistically butchered, some hacked to pieces. Almost all of the crimes have gone unpunished.
The number of such killings is statistically steadily increasing by the year, as the perception of what constitutes ‘honour’ widens. The flimsiest of suspicions, such as a rumour spread in a village, or in one extreme case, a man’s dream of his wife’s adultery, is enough to provoke lethal violence. Women are not even given a chance to clear up possible misunderstandings. Tradition decrees only one method to restore honour - to kill the allegedly offending woman. Standards of honour and chastity are not equally applied to men and women in Pakistan, though the honour code applies to both equally. In surveys conducted in the NWFP, Balochistan and Sindh, men were found going unpunished for ‘illicit relationships’ whereas women were killed on the merest rumour of ‘impropriety.’ The sheer scale of the phenomenon in Pakistan makes it a case apart.
Originally, this disgraceful and disgusting practice was a Baloch and Pashtoon tribal custom that during the past couple of decades, thanks to the malign influence of President General Ziaul Haq and his brand of expedient religiosity, has become common practice in the province of Sindh, and has even spread into Punjab. The Sindhi districts of Jacobabad, Ghotki and Larkana top the bill for the number of reported killings.
Crimes of honour were pre-Islamic practices. They have no real basis in religion but are encouraged by the rise of religious fundamentalism and in this patriarchal society women, helpless under the law and under social mores, are naturally the prime victims. The problem of widespread impunity is essentially cultural and social. Crimes of honour are an archaic custom deep-rooted in tribal societies of this country that expediently stick firmly to their antediluvian roots.
After writing briefly last week on the plight of a newly married couple of Pano Aquil whose marriage was not to the liking of the ‘elders’ of their tribes (among them Sardar Ali Gohar Maher and Sardar Khalid Ahmad Lund), and who, under threat of death, were in hiding anticipating that a jirga would impose on them the karo-kari death penalty, an e-mail came over the air waves from Sassui Palijo, an MPA of the honourable Sindh assembly. She rightly termed the practice, ‘a cancer in our society’, and sadly but truly wrote that “just because there are women in parliament does not mean that drastic changes will occur because there is no rule of law and even government ministers openly support anti-women laws such as honour killings and the jirga system. Sindh’s cabinet minister Manzoor Panwhar supported and justified honour killings and said that the perpetrators of honour killings should be given more relief. When I tried to condemn him and raised the point in the house, our speaker, Muzaffar Shah, warned me six times and would not let me speak.” What else should she expect from the spineless and the flip-flopppers? What hope can there be?
Another e-mail came from Zulfikar Halepoto. His contention: “Cases of karo-kari will not be stopped unless the state immediately bans the jirga system, the prime protector of the karo-kari tradition … the government and state machinery are natural allies of the feudals and the feudals are the upholders of karo-kari.”
Then on September 23 came news from the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan with details of another couple in hiding after being condemned to karo-kari killing. Doctor Amnat Solangi and Dr Ghulam Mustapha Solangi of district Nosheroferoz married last November, against the wishes of the family of Amnat. Her brother organized a jirga, Rs.20 lakhs were demanded and the return of the woman was called for and rejected. The karo-kari death sentence still stands, the couple remains in hiding, and the HRCP has taken up their case in the court of the Nosheroferoz district and sessions judge pleading that he restrict the violent relatives from “carrying out any illegal overt act against the couple.”
From the Amnesty International Report for 2003, in the section on Pakistan, under the heading ‘Women’s rights’ it is written: “Women and girls continued to be subjected to abuses in the home, the community and in the custody of the state. Impunity for such abuses persisted. Hundreds of women were killed in so-called ‘honour killings’. Some private initiatives were announced. For instance, the head of the Leghari tribe said in March (2002) that ‘honour’ crimes would no longer be permitted. However, the state did not take any action to ban the practice or to ensure that the perpetrators were held to account.” Nor apparently did the head of the Leghari tribe.
An earlier Amnesty Report, of September 1999, whilst on the subject, relates how Nadir Magsi who was known to have provided refuge to many women and couples had settled one elopement incident of his tribe. The couple was to be traced and killed, and the girl sought protection from Magsi. A jirga was held, the woman’s family crying out for the death of the boy. Magsi argued against killing and suggested a payment of two lakh rupees to the woman’s family, with the return of the woman, and a guarantee that the boy would live. The comment made on the incident: “… most sardars are loath to introduce change in the fear of losing their hold on tribal society. The winds of change which come with education, economic development and exposure to the outside world have not been allowed to blow in the regions inhabited by the tribes of Pakistan.” Fine. But then came the comic bit, from well-meaning Amnesty International so abysmally unaware of the realities of this Republic: “However, tribal leaders familiar with the Constitution of Pakistan and statutory law practised in parliamentary debate should use their influence in society to introduce the rights and freedoms they swear to uphold as parliamentarians into a society bound by tradition.”
We now have another president general, who holds vastly different views of how life should be lived in this Republic from these of his predecessor in office, and on whom great hopes were pinned when he took over in October 1999. A man of liberal thought, who claims adherence to the principles outlined and formulated for the country by its founder, he was expected to act swiftly and decisively in the interests of law and order and human rights, with particular emphasis on the horrors and sufferings to which women of the less privileged class are subjected. He has so far failed to deliver.
While speaking this week in New York, Gen Musharraf said that his writ did not extend to the tribal areas, to FATA. But does it not extend to the entire settled areas of Pakistan? When he looks into the Pano Aquil incident should he not swiftly remove the involved sardars of Sindh from the positions of power with which he has endowed them? What sort of Ataturk has the general turned out to be?
As for the unfortunate couple from Pano Aquil, some considerate caring police officers and others have helped and for the time being they are beyond the reach of the obscurantist graduate sardars and their henchmen.To those Pakistanis who live abroad and send me e-mails informing me that their bodies may be far from the homeland but their souls are very much here, my advice to them is to quickly retrieve their souls. If they wish to aid the helpless abused women of this blighted nation, they can contact the brave volunteer women of the Aurat Foundation ([email protected]), who are far more active and effective than is our government or our assemblies, and send them money to further strengthen their organization.