November 25, 2006	Saturday	Ziqa'ad 3, 1427

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International day for elimination of violence against women

LAHORE, Nov 24: Sumera was only 13 when her father Sultan Ahmad, due to his declining health, decided for early marriage of his daughter with one Maqsood Shaikh of Pindi Bhattian. The first six months after the wedding passed happily. Rough time for Sumera began when she found out that her husband had extra marital relations with his elder brother Jahangir’s wife, Jannat, who shared the same house in a traditional joint family system.

To ward trouble off her own head, Jannat in a pre-emptive strike told her husband that Sumera had loose morals, alleging that she had illicit relations with other men in the neighbourhood. Both Jahangir and Maqsood started verbally and physically torturing the teenager. Torture tactics included Sumera being kept in chains and tied up on the roof under burning sun; she was also beaten with hot iron rods and nearly starved.

When neighbours objected to the treatment being meted out to Sumera, they were told that she had become mentally ill. However, no one was allowed to visit her, and that included Sumera’s mother. Her father had died three months after the marriage.

The girl’s ordeal continued for two years; it came to an end only when neighbour Allah Ditta managed to convince Sumera’s tormentors that she should be allowed to spend a couple of days with his family. He took another step by contacting the mediamen to bring to light

the torture she had been subjected to.

Learning about the horrific domestic abuse, the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan dispatched a fact-finding mission which confirmed the incident as her tormentors had fled the house. With the help of community elders, Sumera managed to get a divorce as her family, fearing a backlash from the accused, refused to initiate legal action against Jahangir, Maqsood and Jannat.

Sumera was lucky in that she managed to end her suffering within a couple of years; there are innumerable other women who are undergoing torture and torment caused by domestic abuse, with no end to their misery because of primitive social customs, attitudes based on a chauvinistic system, and lack of political will on the part of the rulers. Want of laws and prompt legal action to penalise the abusers is also to blame for the state of affairs.

Women’s rights activists say sexual abuse and violence against women have reached epidemic proportions in South Asia. From honour killing to acid throwing, gender-selective abortions to domestic violence, rape to sex workers’ trafficking, child abuse to murder for dowry, violence suffered by women is systematic and on a mass scale.

Just in Lahore 86 cases of rape, 26 of abduction with intentions to rape, two of acid throwing, one of face mutilation and 13 of domestic violence have been reported during the first 10 months of the current year. There is no count of what Aurat Foundation’s Farzana Mumtaz calls hidden torture.

“Denying access to education, harassment at the workplace, offering daughters leftover food, forced marriages, eve-teasing in markets and public transport are all various kinds of hidden mental torture to women.”

Governments, it is known, play a vital role in making the environment violent or peaceful in a society. What the rulers here are known to do is make promises and take ad hoc steps, if any, for improving the situation but without creating a mechanism whereby rights can be guaranteed and laws enforced.

The HRCP’s Hina Jilani lays stress on changing attitudes and putting in place a mechanism to better the lot of the majority of Pakistani women instead of taking isolated steps. For want of a strong social policy, she asserts, the half-hearted, half-baked and cosmetic steps will fail to bring about a significant change to the status of women. “There will be little use in enacting laws without changing attitudes of institutions which are still wielding anti-women and conservative views. There should be a committed policy to modify their behaviour.”

About lack of mechanism, she says there is no system to ensure registration of a complaint by a victim of violence. “Even activists like lawyers, working for violence victims are sometimes baffled about how to get relief for their clients, what to talk of victims themselves. There is no legal tool or procedure available for accomplishing the task effortlessly.”

Ms Jilani says even women police stations are useless to the notional level because the statutes under which these are created provide them no powers to protect women victims of domestic or social violence.

Ms Jilani rejects attitudes such as one embodied in the saying that a woman’s worst enemy is also a woman; it is myth and an attempt by men to shift their guilt and responsibility on to others, she says. “A man does not consult his mother or sister when occupying someone’s property, killing a person or raping a girl, but strangely he excuses to be incited by his mother or sisters to torture his wife.”

The basic question, she says, is that when the life and honour of a woman member of a family is undervalued then everyone will try to take advantage of it.

Though men belonging to lower classes are also robbed of their rights in unjust and feudal societies, women of these classes are more vulnerable to injustice, discrimination and unfairness as they are thought of as property of men and have no identity and status of their own. For this reason physical and mental torture of women and even “honour” killing is considered a societal right of men. Such injustices to women are either conveniently ignored by society or if the proverbial long hand of the law comes into action, steps are taken so half-heartedly that the rationale behind the effort is lost.

Ms Farzana Mumtaz says the notion that domestic violence is prevalent among the poor and lower classes of society are folklores. “Violence against women is present in all classes irrespective of their education and poverty levels, though its nature changes with the change in class.”

Ms Jilani says social inequality and poverty breed violence, but that does not mean that the authorities should refuse to take responsibility for the general hostility men in traditional societies reserve for women. The government should act to remove the basic causes of gender inequality. She regrets that despite a Shariat court decision, the government has not yet introduced land reforms for improving the lot of landless peasants, whose women live under particularly trying conditions.