WASHINGTON, Nov 1: “Teach our men to respect women,” Mukhtaran Mai told a large gathering at Amnesty International’s Washington office on Tuesday when asked how to end violence against women.

“Education is the key. In our villages, the waderas use the poor to victimize the poor. If we can educate the poor, they will not do their bidding,” she said when a reporter asked her how to change Pakistani villages. Mai, the rape-victim turned human rights activist, impressed everyone with her short but to-the-point responses and with her innocence.

She had no problem acknowledging she did not know what

to say whenever someone asked long, complicated questions.

During her two-day stay in Washington, Ms Mai will be rubbing shoulders with the high and the mighty of the US capital, including White House and State Department officials, Congressmen and community leaders.

On Tuesday evening, she met US Assistant Secretary of State for South Asian Affairs Christina Rocca.

She is also addressing some senior members of the US Congress and a gathering at Washington’s Woodrow Wilson Center.

At the Amnesty meeting, Mai began her presentation with a passionate appeal to Pakistan’s well-wishers to support education programmes in the country if they want to change the situation.

“Both men and women will continue to suffer if we do not educate our children,” said Mai who now operates a girls school in her native Mirwala where she was gang-raped on the orders of a tribal council.

“Education gives you courage to defy … to defy the waderas and all those who force the poor to oppress their own,” she said. “There’s a greater need to educate our men, particularly in the villages.”

She added: “Our men need to learn how to respect women, how not to take them for granted, how not to oppress them. They need to be told that women have rights too.”

She said it was also important to prevent waderas from using police to oppress the poor. “In our villages, policemen take their orders from the waderas. The thana is a tool that the waderas use to subjugate the poor. This lethal combination must be broken.”

Ms Mai said that she had no plan to run for elections but will continue her work to help the poor, particularly in and around her village.

She also appealed to the international community to donate generously to the earth-quake relief fund and said that she would donate $5,000 to the fund out of $20,000 she will receive from the Glamour magazine as part of the ‘Glamour woman of the year award.”

Her sponsors, the Asian American Network Against Abuse of Human rights, will also donate $5,000 and are using their platform to appeal for donations wherever Mai speaks.

Mai refused to get involved into political discussions. “There are good and bad people in every institution but the army has helped our cause,” said Mai when someone asked her to comment on the military rule in Pakistan.