Tag Archives: Pakistan

Pakistani Earthquake Used as Opportunity to Steal Property from Widowed Women

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According to the United Nations’ Integrated Regional Information Networks, the earthquake in Pakistan at the end of last year was used as an opportunity to steal land and other property from unmarried women.

Typical of such victims is Zumera Bibi. The IRIN report describes how Zumera and her four daughters left their house temporarily after the quake. While she was gone, her dead husband’s nephews seized the property and claimed it as theirs. According to the IRIN story,

Zumera has no sons, and as tradition dictates she and her daughters have no right to the property, which would revert back to the brothers of her husband on his death. Even though, under the law, her daughters should get at least a share in the inheritance, this is frequently denied to women.

Well there’s a shock from a part of the world where women can be raped as a method of tribal revenge.

The IRIN story goes on to say that,

In some cases, the claims of the women to hte property have been challenged, and according to reports received by NGOs active in quake-hit areas of North West Frontier Province (NWFP), women without mail family members have been forced to vacate homes or else hand them over to male relatives in the hope that, in return, they will help care for them and their children.

With apparently no credible system of property rights, it is easy to understand why Pakistan’s per capita GDP sits at a pathetic $2,400. In the process of impoverishing women like Zumera, Pakistan is impoverishing the entire nation.

Source:

Pakistan: Female quake survivors losing property. Integrated Regional Information Networks, January 3, 2006.

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Pakistan Vows to Crack Down on Honor Killings

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A day after Pakistan Prime Minister Musharraf issued a public call to end honor killings in that country, the BBC reported that two women in were murdered in what were believed to be honor killings.

In one incident, a man murdered his 21-year-old sister and her husband for marrying without first gaining the consent of the family. In the other incident, a man murdered his 17-year-old sister based on his belief that she was having an affair of some sort.

Estimates by human rights organizations suggest that 400-500 women are victims of honor killings every year in Pakistan. On February 10, Musharraf said that such murders were a “curse” and that his government would prosecute people accused of such crimes (Pakistani police have been accused in the past of doing only cursory investigations into suspected honor killings). Musharraf also called for more debate on Pakistan’s Hadood laws that, among other things, require four male witnesses for women to pursue rape charges against men.

Sources:

Pakistan ‘honour killings’ arrest. Paul Anderson, BBC, February 11, 2004.

Musharraf plea on ‘honour killings’. BBC, February 10, 2004.

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Woman Drug Trafficker Sentenced to Death in Pakistan

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Nigerian citizen Osfatu Bose Oweiye was sentenced to death in Pakistan in May after being convicted of heading up a heroin smuggling ring in that country.

Oweiye was arrested in 1999 in connection with a drug bust that turned up 20 kilograms of heroin in a Lahore hotel room. Pakistan’s Anti-Narcotics Force argued that Oweiye headed up a drug-trafficking ring that included at least five other individuals.

The heroin was going to be smuggled out of Pakistan and sold in other countries. Since the fall of the Taliban in Afghanistan, poppy production in that country has exploded, making it lucrative once again to smuggle heroin through Pakistan for distribution elsewhere in the world.

Source:

Pakistan death sentence for woman. The BBC, May 7, 2003.

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World’s Outrage Directed at Pakistan Rape Case

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Pakistan bore the full brunt of world outrage this month after published reports that a tribal council sentenced a 30-year-old woman to be forcibly raped by four men as punishment for her brother’s alleged affair with a woman of a higher prestige tribe.

The incident happened in the last week of June after the brother of Mukhtar Bibi was accused of carrying on an “illicit affair” with a woman of the Mastoi tribe. Bibi and her brother are from the Gujjar tribe which has a lower social standing.

A tribal court decided that as punishment, Mukhtar Bibi would be raped by four men of the Mastoi tribe. In front of hundreds of witnesses, the four men took her in to a room and raped her for more than an hour. The woman’s father tried to stop the rape, but told CNN that, “We begged for mercy in the name of God from them, but they held guns on us and so we were helpless.”

Pakistani police largely ignored the matter. Although the rape took place on June 22, it wasn’t until more than a week later that police began investigating the rape, and then only because a group of human rights lawyers all but forced them to. Pakistan’s Supreme Court was extremely critical of the local police, and promised an investigation into their inaction.

Meanwhile, two of the four men who participated in the rape have been arrested along with some members of the tribal council that passed the outrageous sentence.

Although the tribal decision was extreme even for Pakistan, women’s rights activists in Pakistan noted that such human rights violations are par for the course in a country that is often extremely hostile to women. After all, honor killing is a major problem in Pakistan and that country has sentenced more than one woman to death by stoning for adultery (although none of those sentences has been carried out yet). Human rights activist Fouizia Saeed told The BBC,

We must condemn institutional acceptance of women symbolizing honor and the routine rape and killing of women being carried out to dishonor or restore honor to families, and institutionalized violence.

This controversy is also a stark reminder of what often seems like an impassable chasm that separates Western attitudes toward women from those in countries dominated by traditionalist versions of Islam.

Sources:

Police attacked in Pakistan rape case. The BBC, July 5, 2002.

Pakistan police arrest second gang rape suspect. CNN, July 6, 2002.

Protests over Pakistan gang rape. Owais Tohid, The BBC, July 3, 2002.

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Pakistani Women Sentenced to Stoning for Adultery Conviction

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The BBC reports that a woman, Zafran Bibi, has been sentenced to be stoned to death after being convicted of adultery in Pakistan.

Pakistan introduced the Islamic Sharia law in 1980. Several women have been sentenced to death for committing adultery in that time, but none of those sentences were ever carried out.

Bibi had filed a rape charge against her brother-in-law, but later reportedly confessed to having an affair with him. She was sentenced to death based on that confession.

Source:

Stoning sentence for Pakistan woman. Susannah Price, The BBC, April 19, 2002.

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Stop Honor Killings

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The other day I was reading a book by an academic feminist who argued, among other things, that the idea that there is a universal code of morality (i.e. there are just things that are plain wrong) is a white imperialist idea. Maybe, but I still have to say that honor killings are wrong and the relativists be damned.

What’s an honor killing? An honor killing is where a man kills a female relative if he suspects she’s committed a sexual transgression, and in some cultures such violence is not only ignored but actually sanctioned by the legal code.

In Jordan, for example, two women were recently murdered in honor killings. In one case a father killed his adult daughter after she was released from jail after serving time for a sexual relationship her step brother. In the second case, a woman accused of having extramarital sex was murdered by her brothers. Of course both men and women kill each other in the United States and other parts of the world over sexual infidelity, but here’s the kicker — in Jordan the penal code specifically exempts a man from punishment if he kills a female relative to atone for her sexual transgressions.

According to the BBC (Jordanian women killed ‘for honour’), in Jordan about 25 women a year are murdered this way, and their murderers are protected by law from prosecution. That’s a rather large figure in a country of less than 5 million people.

A small group of reformers tried to get the Jordanian parliament to overturn the law protecting honor killings but failed. A protest against the law drew only a few thousand people.

And Jordan isn’t alone in having a problem with honor killings. A report released by Amnesty International last September claimed that hundreds of honor killings take place in Pakistan every year. Although honor killing is murder under Pakistan’s penal code, juries tend to acquit men who kill their female relatives for reasons of honor and judges tend to give light sentences for those men who say they killed to preserve their family’s honor.

Maybe it’s just the Western imperialist in me, but honor killing is downright barbaric and should be outlawed everywhere in the world.

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