VIOLENCE against women is a serious social problem in Pakistan. Women are threatened, beaten and abused in all classes of the society. Domestic violence against women accounts for more hospital admissions than rapes and accidents.
The government has taken no concrete measures to correct the widespread gender bias of law enforcement personnel and to provide adequate sensitization training to staff who deal with complaints by or about women. The police can often act or allow themselves to be used as guardians of tradition and customary morality, rather than perform their task of enforcement of the law of the state.
Our social structure stinks of the pungent odour of discrimination and lawlessness in the name of traditions. Often, fathers use the police to recover or unlawfully arrest and detain their daughters, who married men of their choice. Despite several judgments asserting that adult women have the right to marry without their male guardian’s consent, police continue to register complaints of abduction or zina. Even when women are seriously injured by their husbands or families, police often discourage them from registering complaints and advise them to seek reconciliation. It is believed that if pursued, any matrimonial or family dispute would bring dishonour to women and their families.
There is rampant killing going on in the name of honour. Here, honour basically signifies the Pakistani male’s ego and sense of superiority that gets badly bruised by a woman standing up for her rights or making decisions for herself. In karo kari cases, when husbands appear at the police station with blood-smeared weapons, declaring that they have killed their wives in the name of honour, the police fail to take action against them, reflecting their unwillingness to enforce the law over traditions.
An activist in Karachi told Amnesty International: “Police are not trained to look at things dispassionately. When a woman is believed to have done something ‘illicit’, or if she claims her rights, there is something wrong with her. She deserves to be punished in the eyes of the police.”
Bribes and financial gains also contribute to the police’s inaction in some cases. For instance, police stations in Jacababad are considered gold mines in the police circles because of the high incidence of karo kari murders there. They also appear to cover up fake honour killings. The husband or any other male member of a family often has a dispute to settle with another man. So that person is killed and the murderer kills his wife, or mother, or sister, or daughter and claims that the victims were having an illicit relationship, so the deed was done in the name of honour. The law lets the murderer go free. Ironically enough, women are not even safe in prisons, where sexual assaults are an everyday routine.
Besides this, rape and sexual abuse are common occurrences. From the feudal’s maid being raped within the four walls of the prestigious haveli to the sexually assaulted wife of the elite class, women are subjected to abuse in all sections of the society.
Sadly enough, the institution of marriage often becomes a prison sentence for many women. Social evils like dowry have destroyed many lives. Almost all stove-burning incidents are outright murders of helpless women by their husbands’ families in the guise of an accident, which are rarely fully investigated by the police. Of the 183 women reported to have died of burn injuries (of 282 burn victims), allegedly while cooking in Lahore, in 1998, only 21 complaints were registered with the police. Only three persons were finally arrested, despite the High Court ruling that all burn cases be fully investigated by police. The HRCP annual report, for 1998, adds that at least 70 of the victims were not even cooking when the supposed accident of catching fire took place.
The Pakistani male considers women as his property and believes in doing what he likes with them. Moreover, women too play a role in increasing the atrocities that are inflicted upon their gender. Mothers-in-law are often involved in stove-burning cases. Women in the rural, as well as urban upper class, are known for their gossip tendencies, fabricating stories, or alleging a woman to be of a ‘bad character’. Even those who remain silent while watching blood gushing or hearing screams of other women are to be blamed. Women will not be given their rights unless they try to make a difference for themselves. However, women are not the only ones in the society treated like animals. The culture of violence hasn’t even spared the youth of Pakistan.
Due to the crippled economy, low literacy rate, drug-addicted fathers and extreme bias that women face in the work place, children often have to earn for their large families. According to a HRCP report, 26 million children between 5 and 14 years of age have never gone to school, but work as part of the family labour in agricultural fields or brick kilns, or as individual wage earners. While farms are their biggest employer in the rural areas, most children working individually are found in the informal sectors, like carpet weaving, shoe making and construction. Most of the work is exploitive and hazardous, and jeopardizes the child’s health and development.
In Lahore alone, 789 cases of child abuse were reported in one year. Official figures show that almost 500 children were sexually assaulted last year in Pakistan. And in many cases the assaulted child is murdered by the abuser. But Sahil, an Islamabad-based non-governmental organization (AGO), thinks these figures are only of those cases which were reported. Anusheh Hussain, the Director of Sahil, says that 90 per cent of child assault cases are never reported.
Kiran, 13, works as a part-time maid in three houses. She seems terror-struck when recalling what she went through one day: “I was busy dusting in the house I worked in. The son of the family suddenly came and grabbed me. I resisted and shouted for help, and then his mother came into the room. Instead of saying anything to him, she slapped me on my face and dismissed me from my job.”
Abused children in Pakistan face more than just the emotional trauma that accompanies sexual assault. Conservative values contribute to a belief that the victim is partly to be blame for the attack. They become outcasts in their community. There have been cases where the whole family moved to another place where no one knew what happened. But in some cases, the perpetrators or their relatives have attacked or threatened the victim’s family.
Children are not even safe at religious institutions, the mudressah. Abuse by the teacher or some other person there is not an unheard of thing.
Thus, in our society, lawlessness is now considered as part of life. People have become immune to the injustices they see around them, particularly those being inflicted upon women and children, the most helpless sections of the society. The government claims to be too busy in tackling more pressing issues like national defence and the battered economy. Thing will hardly improve for the women and children of the nation.
VIOLENCE against women is a serious social problem in Pakistan. Women are threatened, beaten and abused in all classes of the society. Domestic violence against women accounts for more hospital admissions than rapes and accidents.
