The Politics of Rape

Why did the Meerwala Jatoi Panchayat pass the abominable decree that a young woman be raped in revenge for a crime allegedly committed by her younger brother -- and why did they think they would get away with it? For this is what would have happened, had the local Imam of the mosque not spoken out against it during the Friday prayers; a journalist attending the sermon reported the case in a local newspaper, from where it was picked up nationwide, and then worldwide, causing widespread outrage.

Firstly, the ’panchayat’ or council which passed this ’decree’ was obviously certain that there would be no action against it. Jirgas or panchayats are allowed to operate not only in the tribal areas under some sort of legal sanction (’sentences’ passed include execution, flogging, burning down houses, and fines), but also in settled areas where they function illegally, to settle property disputes and other matters. Such self-appointed councils have even begun to pass sentences like public flogging for theft and ’moral waywardness’, as at a Muridke seminary near Lahore last year. Last July, a jirga in village Johke Sharif, district Thatta, decreed that the sister of a minor boy who had accidentally shot dead his friend, should be given in marriage to the dead boy’s father. The girl was also a minor.

Government officials routinely turn a blind eye, and even participate in such councils. Police chiefs and district commissioners attempting to end jirga law find no support from the government and are instead transferred ’in their own interest’. This is what happened with the Commissioner of Shikarpur, Sanuallah Abbasi after he began a campaign against the jirga system last year. Also last year, the Commissioner of Larkana division (Sindh) actually withdrew the ban on jirgas imposed by his predecessor.

Secondly, it is no coincidence that the rise of religious extremism over the last couple of decades, encouraged by successive governments for political reasons, has received the greatest support from the tribal areas. Often the punishments awarded by tribal jirgas are assumed to have religious sanction, even if they have nothing to do with Islam and are rooted in tribal traditions and customs.

The Panchayat’s decree that the ’punishment’ be carried out by four men resonates of the aberrations in the Pakistani law introduced by Gen. Ziaul Haq in his attempts to ’Islamise’ the country. The Zina laws (Hudood Ordinance) introduced in 1979 require the presence of four witnesses to the act of rape or adultery before the crime can be established. The law obliterates the distinction between adultery and rape and criminalizes a private offence, adultery (sexual relations outside marriage between two consenting adults), while making rape a matter for private complaint, in which the onus of proof lies on the victim. The confusion about what is allowed in Islam and what is not; has only been exacerbated by politicizing religion, and the severity of the punishments under these laws.

Even the Federal Shariat Court questioned their religious nature. In 1981, the punishment of stoning to death was in fact removed as being un-Islamic, but later reinstated under political pressure. The demand to review these laws continues to be made, not just by civil society and rights groups, and even the government-constituted, high powered Commission of Inquiry for Women in its report of 1997, which was "convinced that all the Hudood laws were conceived and drafted in haste. They are not in conformity with Islam."

Girls as young as thirteen complaining of rape are instead found guilty of adultery (zina), as the medical reports find evidence of sexual intercourse, and declare them as being ’used to such activity’ - as in the case of the young Kohli girl who was raped in Hyderabad recently by an elected councillor.

As illegal as jirga sentences are the fatwas or ’religious decrees’ that incite violence. Yet, rarely are charges brought against those who make such incitements. A recent exception was Hafiz Abdul Latif, Pesh Imam of the Jaranwala mosque.On July 5, 2002, he issued a ’fatwa’ against Faraz Javed, who had objected to the Pesh Imam making a political sermon while leading the Friday prayers. Javed was saved from being lynched by his American citizenship. The police moved swiftly to arrest those who had besieged his house, proving that when shows that where the state wills it, it can be effective.

Less lucky was Zahid Shah, an insane young man in Chak Jhumra village, who was accused of blasphemy by a cleric and stoned to death by an enraged mob.

Clerics issuing such fatwas have been emboldened by the amendments to the ’blasphemy laws’ of the Pakistan Penal Code, particularly since the life imprisonment option in Section 295-C of the PPC lapsed in 1991, leaving a mandatory punishment of death for those convicted under it. Before 1980, when the PPC began being amended by Gen. Zia to include sterner punishments for religious offences, only four or five cases were registered for such offences. Since then, the severity of the new laws has "provided a handle to the unscrupulous to settle their own scores," notes the HRCP.

Thirdly, women in this society are largely considered as lesser beings, family property and repositories of the family honour; rape for revenge is a common phenomenon, particularly in the southern Punjab and upper Sindh region.

Violence against women has increased, including in the form of ’honour killings’ and other forms of brutalities. In the first week of July alone, several cases were reported: the burning with acid of a young woman, resulting in the loss of one of her eyes as well as injuries to her suckling infant, at a remote village near Layyah in the Punjab; the rape of the young peasant girl in Hyderabad mentioned above; the stripping naked and parading of two women in a Khairpur village.

Where is the outrage for all this violence against women, which so many in this society condone in one way or another? Certainly the self-appointed custodians of our morality, with rare exceptions like the Imam of the Meerwala Jatoi mosque who broke the silence on that case, rarely speak out on the matter, which only encourages this mindset illustrated so clearly by the Meerwala case.

And lastly, the complacency of the Meerwala Jatoi panchayat stemmed from the social system: Ghulam Farid’s family is poor and ’low caste’. The rape of Mukhtaran Bibi appears to be part of an attempt to cover up yet another heinous crime, the sexual assault on Abdul Shakoor, her young brother aged between eleven and fourteen years old, on June 22. After the culprits realized that the boy was not going to hide the incident, they took him to their kinsman, Abdul Khaliq, to seek his help. Khaliq was already trying to pressurize his neighbour, Ghulam Farid, to give up his two acres of land. "He confined the boy to a room of his house and also pushed his 25 year old sister, Naseem, inside.After locking the door, he ran to inform the tribesmen than he had found the boy engaged in a sexual act with the woman". (’The land of shame’, The News on Sunday, Encore, July 7, 2002).

When he went to the police to get his son freed, Farid’s poverty and low social status again came into play. Instead of filing a case against the kidnappers/sodomisers, the police took young Shakoor into custody and demanded money for his release.

What followed next also began routinely. A panchayat was gathered by Khaliq. It would have been normal, if illegal, for such a council to decree that a woman from Ghulam Farid’s family approach them to seek mercy for the accused boy. Or even that Farid give a daughter in marriage to the Mastoi family. Instead, the jirga pronounced the sentence of ’rape for honour’ on the daughter of Farid - who was falsely assured by some that the ’sentence’ would not be carried out.

These issues must be addressed in order to go beyond the outrage and breast-beating that has followed this horrific incident. Stoning, flogging or hanging the culprits to death in public in order to ’set an example’ as many, including the victims, have suggested, will only amount to amputating a diseased limb while allowing the illness to continue festering within the body. Such punishments were administered during Ziaul Haq’s time, when the screams of the convict were amplified for the watching crowd. The result was only to further brutalise society and contribute to a culture of violence. The culprits must be punished, but in accordance with law - and the affected family must be tended to with sensitivity and care, not made to sit on the ground outside the court waiting for hours for their case to be heard, as is currently happening.

The government must take action against illegal rulings, whether made by tribal chiefs or religious leaders. It must ensure that no one takes the law into their own hands, pass or execute ’sentences’. And, finally, it needs to ensure that its functionaries will no longer participate in such activities.