September 17, 2005

LAST week President Pervez Musharraf was quite aggressive in his tone while addressing the “Regional Conference on Violence Against Women” held in Islamabad. He warned that some “people with certain political and financial agendas are involved in demonizing Pakistan and they will be opposed with full force.” He was referring to certain activists who, while taking up the cases of rape victims, criticize Pakistan in foreign lands for its bad record in respect of women’s rights and also some organizations that support and assist them.

The general made two other points that require discussion. One, he argued that Pakistan is being unfairly singled out as a sanctuary for criminals who commit violence against women while the fact remains, he pointed out, that “every ninety seconds a woman is raped in the United States and every year 25,000 women are raped in France.” And, two, he instructed the victims of violence not to “wash [their] dirty laundry outside” [the country]. This was a meandering criticism of Dr Shazia Khalid’s active participation in female rights campaigns since she left Pakistan as well as a justification for prohibiting Mukhtaran Mai from travelling to the US to participate in a human rights conference.

Instead of lecturing the victims who have been raped, brutalized and humiliated, on how to behave in their post-abuse phase of life, one may say the president should have come out with a bold statement of sympathy for them, and an admission that the efforts of his regime have not been adequate enough so far to stem the tide of brutishness, and a promise to do more in the future. It is quite obvious that abuse of women in Pakistan has nothing to do with the Musharraf regime. It is a legacy of the unending feudal order and has its own socio-economic and cultural roots. But, it so happens, it is he who has to be ultimately accountable for the action or inaction of his regime in dealing with such violence.

First of all, the statistics on rape that the general quoted were available simply because the governments of the US or France do not go out of their way to accuse those compiling data on crimes against women (or other vulnerable sections of society for that matter) of pursuing an agenda to tarnish the image of their country. Secondly, there is a clear distinction between judging Pakistan as a country, nation or society and criticizing the government for failing to do its duty. Both kinds of criticisms are legitimate. But it can be argued that the forum for criticism with regard to the former should be an appropriate one, for it does Pakistan no good if a demonstration is organized in front of the United Nations in New York and condemning Pakistanis as misogynists or a corrupt lot.

Criticizing the incumbent regime for being corrupt or oblivious to human rights abuse in the country is, however, a totally different matter. Such criticism is aimed at holding the government accountable and not bringing the country into disrepute. The Musharraf regime has consistently endeavoured to blur the distinction between the government and the country by labelling both types of criticism as unpatriotic — a practice also followed routinely by past undemocratic governments.

The fact that some Pakistani citizens opt to protest against the regime in the US is deplorable. Such protests are reflective of two facts: One, the demonstrators don’t believe that there is enough public space and state tolerance for criticism and dissent within Pakistan. And two, the mechanisms of checks and balances and public accountability that are inbuilt in any system of democracy are dysfunctional in Pakistan.

Do we ever see citizens of the United States or France protesting against their elected political leaders in a foreign country? No, because they don’t need to do so. In any country where the political and judicial institutions of the state are effective there are institutional means to register dissent and criticism or hold representatives of the government accountable. In the US, public representatives are much concerned with how their people in their constituencies view their performance and hence their obsession with public approval ratings.

What does it say about the system of governance in Pakistan and the character of our leaders that they feel angry over protests in New York instead of ones held in front of parliament or the presidency in Islamabad? Gen Musharraf says he hates people washing their dirty laundry ‘outside’. In fact, he should have been disturbed by the fact that victims of rape have been left with no other option except sharing their distress with the public in order to seek the attention of the protectors and dispensers of justice in Pakistan?

Unfortunately, the judicial system in Pakistan has repeatedly failed victims of rape and abuse. What to talk of accountability and justice, there is not even cognizance of the crime and violence women are subjected to unless an indignant or courageous victim takes a conscious decision of doing her ‘dirty laundry’ in public. To seek justice, a rape victim is required to endure pain multiple times. First, when the crime is committed; second, by taking her case to the public; and, third, when the matter is actually taken up by the court, if she is lucky enough.

Why should Sonia Naz have to confide in and seek the help of a journalist to prod the government into taking note of the crimes committed against her? Why should the Supreme Court of Pakistan have to take suo moto action to secure justice for rape survivors? Why is no administrative action taken against those who refuse to register and prosecute such complaints, making the remedial process ad hoc and arbitrary? If President Musharraf finds publicity of rape and violence difficult to swallow and harmful to Pakistan’s international image should he not focus on fixing the system he presides over which, under the given circumstances, offers strict scrutiny only to media-hyped cases?

The argument being made here is a non-starter in terms of gender equality. Here we are not concerned with promoting the type of feminism that argues that the existing legal regime favours the prevalent power structures in society, thus ensuring that the law serves the interests of male power. We are not talking about the economic dependence of women or the various substantive and procedural provisions of law that leave women vulnerable to abuse.

When discussing rape, we are not debating the standards of proof or the facts that need to be proved to establish lack of consent by women. There are no legal or intellectual arguments being made here. This is merely to register outrage over blatant episodes of crime and violence, wherein women are abducted, raped and then shamed (by being forced to walk naked in public or being urinated upon), that go unaccounted. It is not merely the response of the government that is shocking in this regard, but that of society as well.

Pakistan has a long way to go before it can claim women as equal citizens. The starting point has to be legal equality. There are many provisions in various laws of Pakistan that are discriminatory to women. Successive governments have repeatedly done the exercise of identifying such provisions without taking any corrective action. Then there is a second category of laws that do not have a discriminatory intent per se, but have a disparate impact on women. These need to be amended as well.

The problem of crimes against women is an embodiment of callous indifference towards the most vulnerable group among females by a system filled with discriminatory impact. The law, the state institutions and society therefore need to focus not just on legal but also social equality for both genders. Social attitudes hinge on the moral positions people take on every-day issues. As a society we need to revisit our collective consciousness of what is right and what is wrong and question why we still continue to tolerate certain crimes against women, and also justify their continuity in the name of ‘honour’ and ‘morality’.

“It is not because men’s desires are strong that they act ill; it is because their consciences are weak,” noted John Stuart Mill. Pakistani society will need to redefine its moral position vis-a-vis crimes of sex and violence in order to deal with them effectively. Irrespective of the public position people take, there is still a lot of private acceptance in Pakistan of violence perpetrated ‘to save honour’ or ‘morality’ in order to shame someone or to check promiscuity.

As a society we need to get less judgmental about how people exercise personal liberty and more judgmental about those who seek to control the exercise of liberty by others. As Mill aptly put it, “the sole end for which mankind is warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection.”

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