March 9, 2003

I am a survivor of prostitution. A survivor of brutal beatings and rapes. A recovering heroin addict. I will never forget the smell of a crush old trick. The fear. The pain. The knives and guns and fists and fire irons and jail cells. I win never be quiet! — Angel Cossidy

THE destitute women of Pakistan, who have been hurt beyond belief in this atmosphere of visionlessness and callous injustice, are largely silent and feel numb to the core of their hearts. They can see and hear, but cannot tell. Their voices are non-existent, but even if they exist, who would believe what they say? Who would listen? Who would care?

The United Nations has maintained a resident co-coordinator in Pakistan since 1979. More than a dozen UN agencies operate in Pakistan, including UN Children’s Fund (Unicef), UN Development Programme (UNDP), International Labour Organization (ILO), and World Food Programme (WFP), but the woman of the country has not yet benefited directly or indirectly from their development programmes. These agencies discuss the progress with the government to strengthen their gender work, but the status of women, in a number of areas, including mobility, economic and social empowerment and their liberation from the oppressive social factors, still has to cross many barriers. The World Bank administers a number of projects concerning women’s participation in economic development and targets strategies to improve education, health, rural water supply and sanitation.

The illiterate silent majority of the country is bare-footed and resourceless, and those people have no choice but to spend their lives as serfs in the Havelis and fields owned by the feudals.

It is the woman of rural area, no matter of what age, who gives away her body, soul, energy and everything she possesses, to pay her debts.

Women’s access to justice is not only difficult, it is largely ignored by different governments.

Today, we have again elected young feudals as parliamentarians, whose priorities don’t concern these Haris and Mazaras, and their cruelty with these hapless rural people goes on unabated. “I am always frightened of being caught or kidnapped by the feudal lord who owned me and my family for years,” says Menno, an old Rajput woman, who escaped from her captor’s clutches with her daughters and sons. It is a harrowing tale of an underground sanctum, where farmers and their families are kept forcibly and tamed with cruel tactics. Menno is one of many victims, who have been through the torture exacted by the Waderas, and treated like a herd of animals in a grilled room. She still has the guts to recount her saga with all the brave resilience of a cornered panther. In her broken Urdu, she unfolded the heartfelt saga of her plight.

Menno lived in Khipro, Sanghar, where the feudal lord chained all the Haris to force them to work for him. She never had enough food to feed her family; her husband died when the kids were young; none of the Haris of the family could dare to take a stand and protect their daughters and wives from being raped by the landlords. One of Menno’s daughters is still in the custody of the landlord with three other kids.

It is a world that is beyond the imagination of a city dweller. If not for young women like Menno, the urban people would not know what cruelty is still rampant in a rural atmosphere that has no rights for the workers and the farmers, nor any protection for their families. Any farmer or his family, which has been through such circumstances, would be rebellious enough not to believe in an Islamic Republic of Pakistan. Would one blame the victims of such heinous crimes if they hated the very existence of the country and its system?

Rajarah, Mangrio, Jatoi and Mehr are casts of landlords who are very cruel and unforgiving; “They sell the women to other landlords to settle their affairs, they want us to feel powerless. They want us to feel dead and immobilized. They consume our lives and take our freedom with no resistance whatsoever,” said Lali, another victim of the remorseless feudal system. Both the women are in camps set up for the rescued.

The lords have their own boundaries of land where the Haris work. They are not allowed to leave that territory. Women are not only abused sexually, they are also scarred physically by throwing acid, inserting electric rods in their private parts or battering them mercilessly.

Women have been brutalized, killed in the name of honour, or sold and purchased. The trafficking of women is flourishing throughout the country. Most of these girls and women are treated as movable property, sold by one master to another on diminishing prices. Household slavery is in evidence from the earliest times, and was probably an important economic institution. Apart from that, women are hired and bought for sex jobs, where they are taught to earn their living in a way that makes them miserable. These reluctant young girls find their life remorselessly unpleasant. The politicians and landlords keep women in their suburb farmhouses and rest houses to use them as play things.

Lali and Menno said: “We never knew of the price that was paid to buy us, because it is a detail that remains hidden as a part of the business deal between the two parties. Sometimes, these Waderas do marry the abandoned women to the Haris, but for all purposes, it is a marriage only in name, since the girl is not allowed to go home at night. She has to stay with the Waderas.”

A common situation that leads to slavery in the rural areas comes into play when illiterate and poor workers turn to wealthy landlords for money in case of an emergency. They receive the aid on terms that are inhuman and irrevocable; they have to then pledge their labour in return and remain enchained thus, almost all their lives. They die without having any pleasures of ever leading a healthy and free life.

The terms of the loans normally include impossible repayment conditions. The result is that those illiterate workers, their children, and their children’s children, are consigned to slavery and they endure all its associated evils.

India (15 million estimated to be in chattel slavery), Pakistan, Brazil, Peru, Thailand, the Philippines, Bangladesh, Indonesia, and Mauritania are some of the Third World countries where such callous conditions prevail.

Women in Pakistan face high rates of rape, sexual assault and domestic violence, while their attackers largely go unpunished, owing to corruption and bias against women in the criminal justice system. Women who file rape charges open themselves up to the possibility of being prosecuted for illicit sex if they fail to prove their allegation under the Hudood Ordinance, 1979. The victims who appeal to the judicial system are further abused and victimized.

Human Rights Commission of Pakistan notes that an estimated eight women are raped every 24 hours and 70 to 95 per cent of women face domestic violence.

A letter on the Mukhtaran Bibi case sent by Human Rights Watch, New York, to President Pervez Musharraf showed that the situation hadn’t improved much. Human Rights Watch believed that it was imperative that the government authorities brought Tribal Councils Act in accordance with the law, in a manner that respected women’s rights and did not usurp the proper judicial authority of the state.

It seems that the priority list of the government doesn’t include justice for women, despite the fact that a number of women have been elected to parliament. The offenders of justice are free to move in the society with their heads held high, while the victims are made to feel miserable by the unkindest treatment meted out by the corrupt law mafia and the society in general. Moreover, in our societies, sexual perversion and frustration is increasing because of the closed nature of our social fabric where young men and women are not allowed to mix freely and decide their own fates. Under such conditions, the older men marry young girls to settle disputes between tribes. Laws, reforms and implementations are absent in the feudal system.

The four martial laws did nothing but promote and protect feudalism.

Zia’s Islamization efforts had their worst impact on Pakistan’s justice system and produced unfavourable conditions for women’s rights. Yet, none of the elected governments has succeeded in repealing Zia’s Hudood Ordinance.

The Women’s Action Forum (WAF), in September 1981, protested against the Hudood Ordinance, which was a brave voice of opposition to Zia’s promulgation of inhuman laws. Now, with a good representation in the assemblies and the commission made on the status of women, one hopes that the afflicted women will have the right to fight against the discriminatory laws. The state is obliged by its ratification of international treaties to ensure respect for women’s rights and fundamental freedom.

Pakistan acceded to the Convention on All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) in 1996. Under it, the government is required to take action against violence and discrimination that inhibits women’s ability to enjoy rights, equality and freedom, and it is a strong document that must be built up as a saviour of the afflicted women of the country.

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