At a personal level, it was wonderful to be in China – part of the 30,000 women who had arrived from all over the world to work for the advancement of women around the world. We were bused from our grandiose hotel to the splendid, towering site of the UN meeting.
As representatives of respective governments, we partook in the proceedings in a grand hall with microphones attached to our desks. These were lengthy legal agreements on which governments from different continents deliberated and which took into consideration the religions and cultures of participating nations.
Privately, the male leader of our delegation, Masood Khan – then a UN representative in New York – had forewarned us against making interventions, saying he would do most of the talking. Still, as the global body debated on the plight of poor women, my companion, Tahira Mazhar Ali Khan – a senior women’s rights activist from Pakistan – took the microphone and spoke passionately on how the world needed to reduce defense spending to better serve women.
It was nothing I could disagree with. But the outburst scandalized one of the more loyal members of our delegation; to my amusement, she flew out of the room to complain to the male head of the delegation about the digression.
Like the Nigerian delegation, which ranked as the most corrupt in the world, our government delegates dressed fastidiously. The head of our delegation, Salma Waheed – tall, imposing and elegantly dressed – was approached by someone and asked if she was a princess. Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto – who wore an exquisitely tailored shalwar kameez and arrived with glowing complexion – cut a glamorous figure. World leaders who had packed the hall, strained in their seats to hear the woman Prime Minister of Pakistan speak.
I had no doubt that Benazir would take the global community by storm, speaking articulately as she did about the measures taken by the PPP government on behalf of the women of Pakistan. The PPP’s National Report (NATREP), which recommended actions for women in Pakistan, was so slick that we ran out of the copies for other delegates.
Personally, I had less reason to be impressed by Benazir’s eloquence, knowing of the bitter realities for women back home. Indeed, nothing had changed from the report compiled in 1985 by the Commission on the Status of Women. The commission, headed by Begum Zari Sarfaraz, had made a bold report under Gen. Zia. Having traveled the length and breadth of Pakistan, she conveyed the reality that rings true even today: “The average rural woman of Pakistan is born in near slavery, leads a life of drudgery and dies invariably in oblivion.”
As a government delegate from a poor developing country like Pakistan, I was uneasy with the luxurious scale of our accommodations in Beijing. The lobby was spectacular, complete with a cascading waterfall reflected on moving glass escalators. Each one of us had a spacious room that overlooked the starry lights of Beijing.
And yet, on my query to an emissary of Pakistan’s ambassador to China as to why they had not arranged for a more economical hotel, the answer was: “Why do you bother...it’s only the government’s money?”
At the end of the day, our delegation had minimal impact on the “Outcomes Document” adopted at Beijing. While the PPP government agreed in principle to implement the far-reaching recommendations at the Fourth World Women’s Conference, my time in Beijing had convinced me that the government was making speeches merely for diplomatic consumption.
Still, every weekend, I flew to Islamabad on government expense to join women’s groups to make good on the promises made at the Fourth World Women’s Conference. Indeed, Benazir’ government had promised a Platform of Action that would incorporate sweeping changes to uplift women’s lot in the government’s national Five-Year Plan. The weeks rolled by and I found myself in an endless web of planning.
By 1996, I wondered whether the recommendations we had submitted in the NATREP would ever take effect. The government had signed the Convention to Eliminate All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) in March 1995. Still, all discriminatory laws passed by General Zia ul Haq remained unchanged. Moreover, there was no relief in sight for the millions of women trapped by illiteracy and poverty.
Apparently, the establishment also took stock of the money drained from the national exchequer. In August 1996, as I worked in Islamabad on the Five-Year Plan for Women, a panic rumor did the rounds that Benazir’s government was about to be sacked. As a journalist who knew that the military called the shots, I sensed that Benazir’s time had come.
That evening, I flew back to Karachi to learn that the rumor was true. Benazir and her elected government had been sacked for the second time – once again on familiar charges of corruption and failure to control the deteriorating law and order situation.
Whither Women?
At the festive Fourth World Women Conference there had been little to suggest that twelve years later, Benazir Bhutto would be assassinated and her husband, Asif Zardari would lead a nation that would slip to hit almost rock bottom in the World Economic Forum’s rankings of nations with a global gender gap.
With image being everything, the Zardari government moved quickly to show it was serious about women’s rights. In 2009, its preparations for International Women’s Day’s were kicked off with a government emissary’s phone call to a founder member of the Women’s Action Forum, Anis Haroon, that she had been nominated to head the Pakistan Commission on the Status of Women. As someone who takes the issue of women’s rights quite seriously, Anis told the concerned quarters she would think about the proposition and get back to them.
“But by the evening, I received congratulations from my friends. Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani had already announced my name on television,” she shared with me.
In March 2010, Anis headed a government delegation to the Beijing Plus 15 conference in New York. Afterwards, she talked about her government’s success in passing a bill against the harassment of women in the work place. President Asif Zardari had signed the parliamentary bill even though his own party members had opposed it. The bill became law after it was assisted by a women’s parliamentary caucus that cuts across party lines.
Although it was a good gesture, its passage just a few days before International Women’s Day 2010 appeared largely symbolic. Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani, while strengthening the Commission on the Status of Women had also appointed a dozen, mostly conservative, members to the Council of Islamic Ideology (CII). This “balancing act” of the PPP government would annul progressive measures for women.
In August 2009, for example, the CII shot down a bill against domestic violence introduced by women parliamentarians in the National Assembly, arguing it would “fan unending family feuds and push up divorce rates.” Similarly, there are measures that the Women’s Commission would like to take on behalf of women, but are likely to be vetoed by the CII.
In May 2010, the women’s parliamentary caucus held a largely symbolic regional convention of women parliamentarians in Islamabad to search for ways of empowering women and bring peace to the strife-ridden region. While the convention came up with good recommendations to end violence against women, a woman parliamentarian told me what they really needed was “implementation.”
While the Zardari government has increased women’s quota seats in parliament to 21 per cent – up from 17 per cent under Musharraf – and appointed a woman, Dr Fehmida Mirza, as speaker of the National Assembly, change is slow to follow. Pakistan’s women parliamentarians are the wives, sisters, daughters and nieces of feudal and tribal politicians whose traditions often keep them from speaking up on issues of national importance.
Even the constitutional reforms package passed by the Zardari government has avoided repealing the discriminatory laws passed by Gen. Zia ul Haq. Gen. Zia had initially passed the laws as ordinances before they were indemnified to the constitution. That has left the discriminatory laws against women, Laws of Evidence and Qisas and Diyat intact.
On the other hand, decades of hue and cry from Pakistani women have transformed the Zina Ordinances. While the Musharra
f government converted it into the Women’s Protection Act, the Zardari government took it a step further and brought rape within the ambit of the secular Pakistan Penal Code.
As anywhere in the Muslim world, the veil has come back to Pakistan in almost a knee jerk response to US presence in the region. In a male-dominated set up, the different forms of the veil in Pakistan not only defy Western influence but are the preferred traditional form of escape from sexual harassment. Still, women are free to wear Western dress without any fear of retribution.
Indeed, the relatively liberal personal life styles of President Musharraf and President Zardari and inevitable globalization have left Pakistan with a dusting of modernity. Nightclubs have gradually opened while private parties serve alcohol more openly. Most of the superficial changes contribute to a liberal atmosphere in cities like Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad but don’t necessarily empower its women.
Today, in a fragile democracy, the PPP’s government has abdicated its writ over large parts of the country. There, women suffer from galloping population, domestic violence, rapes, honor killings and “marriage to the Quran.” In this backdrop, the civilian government teeters forth – unable to take bold steps that could unlock women’s potential and draw Pakistan out of centuries of backwardness.
Chapter 5
UNCOVERING
A MURDER
A Young Woman Disappears
When people ask me how I met my husband, I sometimes say “Through the newspaper.” That could give the impression that we met through matrimonial ads in Pakistan’s newspapers with the kind of captions that read, “Young bride wanted from good Sunni Muslim family, devoted to the home and children.”
The truth is, I found my husband while hunting for his sister’s killer.
In January 1990, I was the health beat reporter for Dawn and, as such, covered the public hospitals. Three government hospitals in Karachi cater to the poor and needy and it was well known that their corrupt administrations siphoned off even the meager funds they were allocated.
My sources were doctors who contacted me confidentially with grievances that they wanted me to bring to light. Through my write-ups, they hoped to force the hospital administrations to take action.
By that time, I had gained a reputation as a sympathetic reporter. Women, religious minorities, doctors, consumer interest groups, politicians and trade union leaders who felt discriminated against came to me hoping to find recourse through the newspaper.
My senior journalist colleagues watched through the corners of their eyes. At times, I saw their curiosity and touch of envy as clusters of people congregated around my wobbly wooden desk. The room I worked in had no ventilation and no air-conditioning and we sweated in the hot stale air circulated by ceiling fans. However, in the heat of conversations, no one seemed to mind.
Among my sources, one doctor frequently contacted me with bits of information about the malfeasance in hospitals. I had grown to trust him over the years, because his complaints weren’t personal and his tips often proved fruitful.
He was a short, earnest looking young man with glasses. Normally, he spoke so fast in Urdu that he would stumble over his words. Apparently, that stemmed from his desire to communicate “inside information” on sensitive stories that other reporters wouldn’t want to touch. Over time, he had developed a trust in me that allowed him to confide the most troubling problems he witnessed first hand in the system.
Late one evening in January 1990, while I worked at the city desk at Dawn, the earnest young doctor came to visit me. This time, he was whispering.
“She’s disappeared,” he said.
“Who has disappeared?” I said a bit exasperated since I was immersed in juggling other news stories.
“Fauzia, remember the woman doctor I was telling you about?”
I remembered he had telephoned me weeks ago to tell me about a fellow woman doctor who felt she was being discriminated against after she was abruptly ejected from her government housing. The government provided housing for medical interns near the hospitals where they worked. However, there were few rooms to go around and these had to be obtained at a premium.
Shortly thereafter, the earnest doctor’s colleague had called me, fuming. I guessed that he had got her to telephone me as well. Her indignation startled me. She was talking so fast that I heard myself saying, “Wait, wait and slow down.” But her words spilled out fast and furious: “I came back to my room one day to find my furniture and possessions strewn all over the hallway,” she was saying.
Her fury had been directed at Fauzia, who was now missing. Apparently, Fauzia had acted like an upstart and thrown belongings out of the room originally allotted to this woman doctor.
For a few seconds I wondered what the issue – which was prima facie so personal – had to do with a forum as public as my staid newspaper. But there was more to the story. Apparently the woman, Fauzia Bhutto – who had displaced my contact’s colleague – was rumored to be having an affair with a senior member of parliament. Indeed, many had seen the newly-elected member of the Sindh assembly come frequently to pick up the young woman from her room near the hospital.
For me, the fact that a government official had found housing for a young woman was enough to raise a red flag. I knew full well that in a sex-segregated society like Pakistan, men don’t do favors for women without expecting something in return.
Moreover, the incident reeked of existing ethnic tensions. The official in question, Rahim Baksh Jamali was a Sindhi-speaking Member of the Provincial Assembly (MPA) from Benazir Bhutto’s Pakistan Peoples Party. The woman – Fauzia, now missing, too – was a Sindhi speaker from Shikarpur in interior Sindh. As Benazir mania swept the rural areas, Fauzia had campaigned to get Jamali elected on the PPP ticket allotted to him from his hometown of Nawabshah.
It was a time when the Sindhi majority, who lived in the underprivileged rural areas, looked toward Benazir’s rule as an opportunity to lift themselves out of centuries of deprivation. On the other hand the Mohajirs (Muslim migrants from India), who were the majority population in Karachi, looked at the Sindhi-supported PPP rule with suspicion.
Both of the doctors who approached me were Mohajirs and felt the particular sting of being displaced by a Sindhi parliamentarian and the woman he had brought from interior Sindh.
At that time, Karachi had fallen into its worst bout of ethnic violence between the ruling PPP and the MQM. Benazir’s government had been in power for only a year but already the initial and fragile peace accord between the two political parties had given way to kidnappings, torture and murders of rival party members. The city burned when it was not under curfew.
As urban Mohajirs, my sources resented that incumbent PPP officials had brought their own people – Sindhis – into coveted jobs and positions in Karachi.
Twenty six year old Fauzia Bhutto, a former student of Nawabshah Medical College, was part of the Bhutto tribe – one of several prominent tribes among the larger ethnic group of Sindhis. Like most Sindhis she supported Benazir’s leadership of the country.
Tall and lean with shoulder-length hair, the high-spirited extroverted Fauzia was an active social worker. And yet like many young idealistic students in the small town of Nawabshah, Fauzia never had much exposure to men. She quickly became enamored of the well-connected landowner from Nawabshah, Rahim Baksh Jamali, for whom she campaigned in the 1988 election.
A year later as the older balding Jamali was elected MPA in Benazir’s cabinet, he lobbied to bring the pretty young woman to Karachi. Here, he found her a job as a medical intern and got her government housing.
Fauzia became known for her generosity among colleagues, nurses and patients, with her warm, sociable nature quickly winning her close friends. But in a traditional Muslim society like Pakistan, where unrelated men and women do not meet openly, she hid her relationship with Jamali. Only a few select friends knew about it.
Jamali had been known to visit her frequently. Now, her sudden disap
pearance – without any efforts on his part to find her – had my earnest doctor contact deeply concerned.
Barely whispering, with his body language saying more than his actual words, my contact told me that he suspected foul play. Indeed, by the time he had finished whispering his story, I grew just as concerned that a young professional woman had disappeared and her patron had made no effort to find her.
My source wanted me to mention Fauzia’s disappearance in my newspaper reports – hoping that by publicizing her case, we would succeed in finding her.
I waited for the right time to show a connection between the missing Fauzia and the man I knew to be visiting her. On January 12, 1990, I inserted an innocuous paragraph in a larger news report I was doing on a nurse’s strike in the hospital where she worked. I wrote that a PPP member of parliament elected from Nawabshah, Rahim Baksh Jamali had placed his “girl friend” in Room 104 of JPMC doctor’s hostel. This was the room that Jamali had obtained for Fauzia from the hospital administration.
While on the surface this seemed harmless, I had publicly linked Jamali to Fauzia. Unbeknownst to me, Jamali already had a wife and children in his hometown in Nawabshah. By using the term “girl friend,” I had inadvertently stepped on the toes of a man from a tribal background – where extramarital relationships are punishable by “honor killings.”
The next day my report was out in Dawn and I saw its impact. My editor, who oversaw the city desk – Akhtar Payami – signaled to me to come quickly to his adjoining chamber. Glimpsing the urgent expression on his face in the conjoint room with sliding glass windows, I practically skipped inside.
A quiet, unassuming man who looked like he harbored many secrets, Payami told me in hushed tones that Jamali had just telephoned him. Apparently, the MPA had protested at the “objectionable” language used in a reputable newspaper like Dawn. He had been offended, not just by being associated with the missing Fauzia, but by my choice of the term “girl friend.”
Aboard the Democracy Train Page 14