The Minister of Women’s Development made a statement in Washington on 10 April, four days after Samia’s murder, pledging the government’s commitment to women’s rights in Pakistan. A representative from the Pakistani government also condemned the killing before the UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva.
It is remarkable just how different this reaction was, performed in front of the eyes of the world, compared with the government’s reaction at home. The local government didn’t issue a statement for three weeks and then produced only a few noncommittal lines.
Pakistani newspapers reported that local people overwhelmingly sided with Samia’s family. Many Pashtun said the murder should not be considered a crime since it was committed in accordance with tradition.
Both Jilani and Jahangir demanded proper legal investigations, a fair trial and a judicial inquiry headed by a Supreme Court judge to investigate almost three hundred cases of honour killings reported in 1998 in Pakistan. Instead, the Senate of Pakistan heavily criticized them for interfering. Pakistan People’s Party Senator Iqbal Haider tried to present a resolution condemning the killing of Samia but Senator Ilyas Bilour’s reaction was typical: ‘We have fought for human rights and civil liberties all our lives but wonder what sort of human rights are being claimed by these girls in jeans.’
Israrullah Zehri of the BNP, a secular, nationalist party, and Ajmal Khattak, the supposedly progressive leader of the ANP, shouted Haider down. Zehri held the view that Samia Sarwar had disgraced her family who had acted according to tradition. Some senators physically attacked Haider. Only four senators stood in support of the resolution: the PPP’s Iqbal Haider, Aitzaz Ahsan, then leader of the Opposition in the Senate, the late Hussain Shah Rashdi, and the MQM’s Jamiluddin Aali. Twenty-four senators, including recent presidential candidate Mushahid Hussain Syed and luminaries like Javed Iqbal and Akram Zaki, stood to oppose it. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Senate rejected an amended resolution on so-called honour crimes in August of the same year.
The Sarhad Chamber of Commerce, of which Samia’s father was the president, and other religious groups demanded in April that Jilani and Jahangir be arrested in accordance with ‘tribal and Islamic laws’ for ‘misleading women in Pakistan and contributing to the country’s bad image abroad’. Other religious organizations issued fatwas against the two lawyers, promising financial rewards for anyone who killed them. Even the then President, Pervez Musharraf, railed against Jilani and Jahangir, calling them unpatriotic.
Not long after this, five gunmen burst into Jilani’s house, searching for her and her young son; luckily, neither were home. On another occasion, according to a report in Time magazine, a policeman was caught creeping up to her house with a dagger in his hand.
Then – incredibly, unbelievably – on 11 May 1999, Samia’s father filed a case at the police station accusing Hina Jilani and Asma Jahangir of abducting and murdering his daughter.
But despite this seemingly insurmountable opposition, Jahangir said that all the publicity was helping them to reach women across the country, to let them know that someone was fighting for them. The publicity also led to several television documentaries being aired about so-called honour crimes and violence against women, which have also helped to publicize the case.
Today, in addition to her work for the Human Rights Commission, Jahangir works as a UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial killings, a job that has taken her to Afghanistan, Central America and Colombia.
In an interview for Time magazine in 2003, Jahangir said, with more than a little optimism, ‘Eventually things will have to get better. However, the way they will improve is not going to be because of the government or the political leadership, or the institutions of our country, most of which have actually crumbled. It will be the people of the country themselves who will bring about the change in society because they have had to struggle to fend for themselves at every level.’19
Jilani often tells the press that she will never forget Samia’s murder. ‘I will probably never get over Samia’s death. I have never witnessed that kind of violence first hand,’ she said. ‘But as activists we have to fight back.’
As I wrote this section of the book in August 2008, I read a report about a dreadful killing. This atrocity took place in a remote region of the vast Pakistani province of Baluchistan. Initially, reports said three teenage girls, named Hameeda, Raheema and Fauzia, attempted to marry men of their own choosing, and were then reportedly kidnapped by armed local tribesmen, as were two older women who were with them.
The five women were driven away to a desert area by men belonging to the Umrani tribe. The three teenagers were hauled out, beaten and shot. According to Human Rights Watch, they were thrown into a ditch, injured, but still alive. When the two older women, aged forty-five and thirty-eight, protested at what was happening, they too were forced into the ditch where they were buried with the teenagers.
Unbelievably, these killings were defended by senior politicians. Reacting to a female colleague’s attempt to raise the issue in Parliament, Senator Israrullah Zehri said such acts were part of a ‘centuries-old tradition’ and that he would ‘continue to defend them’, adding, ‘only those who indulge in immoral acts should be afraid.’20
Iqbal Haider of the Pakistan Human Rights Commission said the two senators should be removed from Parliament. ‘They are as obscurantist as the Taliban ... these men have violated the constitution,’ he said. Details of the incident only emerged after the local media began to draw international attention to the crime.
As I wrote this section, women’s rights protesters gathered outside Parliament and government buildings in the major cities of Lahore and Karachi. I believe this is the most effective way to make their voices heard and to provoke a response from the government. Three suspects were finally arrested six weeks after the murder, as condemnation and protests against the outrage spread steadily across the country.
Pakistan has one of the worst records when it comes to so-called crimes of honour. As in Jordan, campaigners have fought a long and difficult battle to change the law – specifically to amend the heavily criticized Hudood Ordinance Laws, which governed the punishment for rape and adultery in Pakistan. These laws, enacted by military ruler Zia ul-Haq in 1979, criminalize adultery and non-marital consensual sex. The most appalling aspect of these laws is that a rape victim can be prosecuted for adultery if she cannot produce four male witnesses to the assault.
The new Women’s Protection Bill brought rape under the Pakistan Penal Code, which is based on civil law, not Sharia law. The Bill removed the right of police to detain people suspected of having sex outside of marriage, instead requiring a formal accusation in court. Under the changes, adultery and non-marital consensual sex are still offences but judges are allowed to try rape cases in criminal rather than Islamic courts, eliminating the need for the four witnesses and allowing convictions to be made on the basis of forensic and circumstantial evidence.
The amendments change the punishment for someone convicted of having consensual sex outside marriage to imprisonment of up to five years and a fine of ten thousand rupees. Rape is punishable with ten to twenty-five years’ imprisonment, but with death or life imprisonment if committed by two or more persons together, while adultery remains under the Hudood Ordinance and is punishable with stoning to death.
Research by the Asian Human Rights Commission makes it clear that there has been almost no change in the number of incidents of violence against women since the Bill came into force in 2006. The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan recorded over six hundred cases of ‘honour’ killings in 2007, compiled from media reports. The actual number may be higher (various human rights organizations quote a figure of one thousand) as not all cases are reported. Figures presented to the Senate by the Federal Minister of the Interior provide evidence in favour of this. Between 1998 and 2003, the government states that 4,101 people were killed in so-called crimes of honour.
A UN committee noted that
so-called honour crimes are on the increase in Pakistan even though the country passed a law banning these crimes in 2004. The committee questioned the sincerity of the Pakistani government in ending these crimes and prosecuting people who are guilty of these murders, and charged the Pakistani government of being ‘lenient and tolerant’ towards such crimes.21
It is impossible to know, but is the level of violence actually rising or is it just that the media are reporting such cases with greater frequency? The media boom is certainly instrumental in bringing more of these stories to light. There is little doubt that the vast majority of perpetrators go unpunished.
Recent cases include a woman who was axed to death by her cousin because he was suspicious of her relations with other people. Just before this murder, two bullet-riddled bodies of women were discovered in Gulli Garhi village with a note, which stated they were of ‘loose character’. Hundreds, if not thousands, of jirgas (village courts) have yet to be replaced by courts of law. The ‘edicts’ ordained by jirgas and militants are in open violation of the laws of the land.
Mukhtar Mai, a thirty-year-old woman who lived in the remote hamlet of Meerwala, knows better than most the terrifying power that the jirga is able to wield. In June 2002, Mai’s then twelve-year-old brother Abdul Shakoor had been seen strolling with a girl from the more influential Mastoi tribe; Mastoi villagers demanded Mai’s rape to avenge their ‘honour’.
The village court sentenced her to be publicly gang-raped by four volunteers. Mai’s family sat helplessly while she was dragged into a room. To further humiliate her, and make an example of those who would defy the power of local leaders, she was paraded naked before hundreds of onlookers. Afterwards, her father covered her with a shawl and walked her home.
Incredibly, Mai refused to leave it there and fought a public battle to bring her attackers to trial. She told reporters she would rather ‘die at the hands of such animals’ than ‘give up her right to justice’. Incredibly, despite several threats, she not only brought them to trial, she won the case. Half-a-dozen of the men involved in her rape have been jailed and two of them have been sentenced to death. Mai has used the money awarded to her by the court as compensation to open a school in her village where, according to Mai, ‘children will be taught the real meaning of honour’.22
In February 2008 an Islamic fundamentalist shot and killed a government minister because of her refusal to wear a Muslim veil.23 Zilla Huma Usman, the Punjab Provincial Minister for Social Welfare, was shot as she prepared to address a public gathering in the town of Gujranwala. The attacker, Malulvi Ghulam Sarwar, said that he was opposed to the participation of women in politics and the refusal of many professional women in Pakistan to wear the veil.
Speaking to a local TV channel, he said, ‘I have no regrets. I just obeyed Allah’s commandment. Islam did not allow women to hold positions of leadership. I will kill all those women who do not follow the right path, if I am freed again.’
It is clear to me that as long as the government of Pakistan refuses to challenge fully the brutality of tribal law, along with outdated traditions and values, then all women will continue to suffer. People must be given a voice; it is only by hearing their stories and by public outcry that the legislators themselves will be shamed into doing something about it.
Afghanistan
Things are even worse for women in neighbouring Afghanistan. One of the most famous murders in recent times took place in the middle of the night of 6 June 2007, as Afghan journalist Zakia Zaki lay sleeping next to her twenty-month-old son.
Three attackers sneaked into her house and shot her seven times, sparing her young son and five other children.24
One of the few female reporters to criticize the Taliban, thirty-five-year-old Zaki ran the US-funded Radio Peace, launched in 2001. Her colleague and head of the Afghan Independent Journalists’ Association, Rahimullah Samander, said ‘She believed in freedom of expression, that’s why she was killed.’ Zaki’s killers struck just days after a female newsreader at a TV station was shot and killed for reasons that remain unclear.25
On the day she was shot, the US Congress earmarked $45 million – twice the 2002 amount – for Afghan government groups and NGOs dedicated to empowering women. The country needs it. A weak judiciary, a lack of law enforcement and widespread discriminatory practices against women are fuelling a rise in so-called honour killings in Afghanistan, according to a 2006 report from the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC).
Asma Jahangir, UN Special Rapporteur on religious freedom, said during an international conference in Sweden in December 2004 that approximately four hundred so-called honour killings had been documented in 2004, but only twenty men were arrested and were given mild sentences. Jahangir described so-called honour killings as the most hidden of all crimes: ‘The “deadly silence” among people at large is a major cause of the deaths of women, not only the open violence of the perpetrators.’26
But things are changing. Afghanistan’s government, which says it is committed to human rights and ending discrimination against women, hopes to end the practice but admits there are challenges ahead. Dad Mohammad Rasa, an interior ministry spokesman, said honour crimes were prosecuted, but that the practice was so entrenched that stamping it out would take a long time: ‘We have created a commission in the interior ministry to try and eradicate such cases but it will take a long time to overcome such crimes as it has become a part of many people’s culture.’
Women can participate in every walk of life, including politics. Of the 361 members of Parliament today, ninety-one are women. Women have also begun talking about forced marriages, honour killings, abortions and rape in this traditionally male-dominated society. Local human rights groups are also now leading the way to change by documenting and exposing such atrocities.
Despite these advances, violence against women, such as immolation, forced marriages and rape, remains widespread in Afghanistan. The AIHRC documented over 1,500 cases of atrocities against women in 2006.
A third of these women were victims of domestic violence, simply called ‘beating’ in the rights group report. Two hundred of them were married off forcibly, ninety-eight of them set themselves on fire, and over a hundred of them tried to end their lives by taking poison.
Iraq
In Iraq, another war-torn region of the world, women’s rights have deteriorated dramatically since the start of the US-led coalition’s occupation of the country. Despite the horrific number of honour killings, the status of women may have a chance of improving in Kurdistan (the semi-autonomous region in northern Iraq) where the government is secular, in contrast to Baghdad where the religious parties hold power. The Kurdish police and courts are also more sympathetic than those elsewhere in Iraq to women whose lives have been threatened. There are currently no shelters for women in Baghdad or Basra.
Reliable statistics on honour killings are nonexistent; as in other countries in the Middle East where the tradition is tolerated, such as Egypt and Morocco, honour killings are largely treated as private family matters. Iraq is a tribal society where honour killings are an accepted practice and cases have been increasing because conservative attitudes have spread since the fall of Saddam Hussein.
Under Saddam’s laws, which are still in place, men convicted of so-called honour killings can receive up to three years in jail. But because the crime is rarely reported, few are actually prosecuted. And since there is widespread sympathy for the killers among police and judges, those who are convicted rarely serve more than a few months.
When US forces overthrew Saddam Hussein, the Bush administration proclaimed that women’s rights would be at the centre of its project to make Iraq a democratic model for the rest of the Arab world. But violence against women is rampant, rising every day with the power of the militias. Beheadings, rapes, beatings, suicide, genital mutilation, trafficking and child abuse (masquerading as marriage) of girls as young as nine are all on the increase – any woman who dares to p
rotest will immediately find her life in great peril. Iraq is without question one of the most dangerous places on earth to be a woman.
Duaa Khalil Aswad, a seventeen-year-old student at the Fine Arts Institute in Bashiqa in Iraq, fell in love with her neighbour, Muhannad, who owned a local cosmetics shop. Like many young lovers they met whenever they could. On most days Muhannad picked Duaa up after her college classes.
In 2007, as their relationship intensified, Duaa tried to convince her boyfriend to elope with her so they could get married after she had converted to Islam but he refused, telling her that her family needed to approve their marriage as well.
Duaa’s family were Yazidis, belonging to the smallest of the three branches of Yazdanism, a Middle Eastern religion with ancient Indo-European roots. Yazidis are primarily Kurdish-speaking and most of the religion’s 350,000 to 500,000 members live in the Mosul region of northern Iraq. They have been persecuted by a succession of rulers, from the Ottomans to Saddam Hussein. Neither Christian nor Muslim, they worship a blue peacock known as Malak Taus. They are fiercely insular, opposing marriage to non-Yazidis, and it is virtually impossible for non-Yazidis to convert.
When Duaa decided to inform her parents of her decision, they weren’t pleased but at the same time they didn’t try to stop her. Her uncles and cousins felt differently, and when they heard that she had converted to Islam so she could marry the man she loved, they decided to take matters into their own hands.
Her father, worried for her safety, took Duaa to a cleric. She should have been safe under his guardianship; a tradition supposedly respected by all tribal members. On 7 April, Duaa’s uncles arrived at the cleric’s home and told him that the family had forgiven the girl and wanted her to return. Duaa, who was dressed in a black skirt with a red jacket, really thought they had forgiven her and got ready to go. As the cleric became suspicious the men stormed the house and dragged Duaa outside by her ponytails to meet her fate.
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