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By: Dr Gulzar H.
Shah
The government, civil society and the media need to
jointly act against the social evil of honour killing. While a total reform
of laws is in order, a ban is also essential on decisions of the panchayats
and the jirgas that violate the country's Constitution.
In a small neighbourhood in Haji Colony, Sargodha, the dreams of newlywed
Zahra Bibi shattered when her husband, Nur Sultan, came home from work. He
accused her of sexual misconduct with his father's friend and employee,
Sanaullah, who had come to visit them that fateful morning of May 26, 2004.
The very next moment, a shot was heard and Sanaullah dropped dead. Zahra was
the next to die in a grim attempt to restore Nur's honour. She was axed to
pieces, a gruesome violation of human rights and the law of the country.
This drama is repeated almost daily in Pakistan. On May 16, a front-page
news item in a leading national daily reported: "Musharraf calls for law to
ban honour killing". Taken literally, it seemed to imply that currently
honour killing is not banned. Our social institutions, including the systems
of value, belief, norms, legal, criminal investigation and the panchayat and
jirga play a contributory role in its perpetuation. President Gen Pervez
Musharraf's call for an urgent change in the country's laws to foil the
uncontrolled rise of honour killing is definitely a step forward. But the
implication that it is not banned speaks volumes about the human rights
situation and extent of sexism in Pakistan.
Attempts to raise the penalty for honour killing to match that for
manslaughter have met with stern opposition in Muslim countries. For
instance, a proposed law imposing harsher punishment for men performing
honour killing was bluntly rejected by parliamentarians in Jordan. Proposal
for stricter sanctions against honour killing was opposed in September of
1999 by senators in Pakistan, directly contradicting Pakistan's 1996
ratification of the United Nations Convention on Elimination of All Forms of
Discrimination against Women.
President Musharraf has put his foot down in declaring the practice a "crime
and a curse, and in violation of the country's laws" and terming it an
"attitudinal problem of the people in position and authority with a negative
mindset" (Dawn, Feb 11, 2004). In May this year, the President reaffirmed
his commitment to the promotion and protection of human rights at a
convention by announcing the establishment of an independent National
Commission for Human Rights to facilitate the implementation of HR
standards. His intentions to address the problem are definitely
praiseworthy. The intended results have yet to withstand the test of time.
Honour killing results primarily from actual or perceived sexual
transgression. It is the most gruesome of sado-masochistic rituals available
to patriarchs in male-dominant societies such as ours. These rituals come in
handy in terrorizing women and keeping them in a constant state of fear to
wield control. Honour killings parallel the historical practice of witch
hunts in the West in a variety of ways, with women being exclusive targets
of victimization in both.
Honour killings adopt many forms in the four provinces of Pakistan. In Sindh,
karo-kari, literally meaning blackened man and woman, has gained notoriety
in international media. The slightest hint of illicit sexual behaviour or
interest damns a woman as kari and her alleged lover as karo. The difference
is that whilst the female is considered to have brought shame upon the
family that can only be restored through a macho display of ghairat by a
male family member through her cold-blooded murder, the karo is considered
to have brought honour to his clan. He can address the grievances of the
female's family by offering monetary compensation or by offering an innocent
woman of his own clan in return. Other provinces have the same practice with
slight variation, with other names such as siahkari in Balochistan, or to
blacken the faces of the alleged perpetrators in Punjab.
Excuses for honour killing include acts such as behavioural patterns piquing
suspicion of illicit relations. Not long ago, on May 22, 2004, Omar Baloch,
a resident of Khamiso Goth, New Karachi, killed his wife, Mehran Bibi, 40,
on suspicion of infidelity, and step daughter Farzana, 20, a mother of an
infant. Public remarks or sexual advances by a male, preference for a
marital partner against the family's will, refusal to marry a man selected
by the family, illicit sexual relationships, or seeking a divorce can be
grounds for honour killing. The most blunt and diabolical example of honour
killing occurred on April 6, 1999, when 29-year-old Samia Sarwar, a mother
of two young sons, was shot dead in her lawyer's office in Lahore for
seeking a divorce.
Rape provides equal grounds for a woman's murder. In our stereotypical
belief system, a rape victim instantly loses her honour and thus her value
as an object of worth becomes a social anathema. The damage is considered
irreversible. Women in many cases are not given a chance to state their
position. In many cases, circumstances are created for her to commit
suicide. The influx of weapons resulting from the Afghan war and economic
marginalization of the masses are among the other factors.
Honour killing belongs to a family of crime that is typically under-reported
for obvious reasons. The police is a product of our patriarch-stricken
culture, ill-equipped to handle evidence on a scientific basis with unbound
powers and an insatiable appetite for bribe. Declaring honour killing as a
family matter, the police may tend to overlook the evidence necessary to
build a case. Many families also try to cover it up by staging a suicide,
accident or simply natural death, in order to save the family breadwinner's
life. Courts, too, frequently side with the offenders and utilize the
slightest element of doubt to acquit them.
Due to under-reporting, the gravity of the situation cannot be quantified.
It can be guesstimated by experts that for every reported case there might
be at least four to five cases that are not reported. A report released in
2003 placed the annual number of honour killings (in 2002) at 1,016 in
Pakistan. According to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP),
however, the number of documented honour-based murders stood at 290 in 2002.
The majority of these deaths, ie, 64.5 per cent were married women. The
victims are from all age groups. In Punjab alone, there were 149 documented
deaths due to honour killing, of which 11pc were minors.
The HRCP statistics also indicate that offenders have a good chance of
escaping the law. Of the 1,339 documented cases of honour killing during the
five-year period of 1998-2002, a total of 1,035 FIRs were registered and
only 202 or less than 20pc of those named in the FIRs were put behind bars.
Ironically, the victims are mostly innocent. Autopsies performed on the
victims show that 95 per cent of females killed had had no sexual relations
whatsoever.
Honour killing is a vicious smokescreen used to make the justice system go
blind. Like other organized violent crimes, many see honour killing as an
excuse to conceal other crimes, acquire women, personal vendetta and, of
course, to make money. Killing a woman of the family to cover up the murder
of a man, by designating him as her alleged lover, appear all too frequently
in newspapers. Consumerism and materialism have given rise to greed, and
honour killing is often used to satiate it. The worst reported case study in
this regard occurred in 1992 in a village called Gujrani where a resident
declared his 85-year-old mother a kari before killing her and pocketed
Rs25,000 from the man he had alleged as karo. Cases of killing sisters in
the name of honour to grab her share of land have also been reported.
A few months ago, in Lahore, a 14-year-old boy killed his mother with a
mason's tool for displaying signs and symptoms of "loose character." In a
social milieu where the worst harm may come to a female from a family
member, who can she trust? Family is the most important of all social
institutions and providing emotional support is more important in a family
than regulating sexuality. When faced with sexual harassment, a female
depends on family support. Instead, brothers are the most frequent
executioners (35pc), followed by husbands (29.5pc) and other relatives
(16.2pc), such as fathers, in-laws and sons. That is according to the
empirical evidence from cases of honour killings documented by the HRCP
during 1998 to 2002. There is a reason why non-adult males are delegated the
responsibility to carry out the execution; they stand to face lighter
sentences. For instance, the father of the 14-year-old was present at the
time he killed his mother.
Interpretation of Islam in one's support comes in handy, too. Unfortunately,
we use Islam to justify things such as honour killing when rationality
fails. Ironically, honour killing is totally un-Islamic in that Islam
requires four witnesses, a court hearing and an equal sentence for both the
male and female.
The current legal system is partially to be blamed, which is increasingly
perceived as inefficient, inaccessible and unaffordable by the general
public. This perception, coupled with the chances to get away with reduced
or no sanctions, makes it plausible for some to seek cheap thrills by taking
the law into their own hands and showcasing ghairat by raising havoc.
At times, the jirga and panchayat affix a seal of legality on such horrific
killings. In October 2003, on the direction of the local jirga, Mohammad and
Shazia Hasan were killed by a firing squad. Their fault was that they
married against her family's will. The girl's father pardoned the daughter,
but the members of the Khaskheli clan, to which the girl belonged, did not.
The government, civil society and the media need to jointly act against the
social evil of honour killings. While a total reform of laws is in order, a
ban is also essential on decisions of the panchayats and the jirgas that
violate the country's Constitution. In addition, the Government of Pakistan
needs to amend laws that discriminate against women to prevent them from
being brutalized and killed in the name of honour. The Law of Qisas and
Diyat project the private nature of murder within the family, and allows
discretionary punishment if the legal heir of the victim is a direct
descendant of the perpetrator. In addition, the Section 300(1) of the
Pakistan Penal Code aids in reducing the charge from murder to manslaughter
and the sentence from death penalty to imprisonment, in case of "grave and
sudden provocation". Instead, those who commit cowardly acts of violence
against women in the name of "honour" should be dealt with harsher sanctions
rather than reduced ones. Greater female economic autonomy and their greater
participation in politics and judiciary will also help alleviate the gravity
of the situation.
Other preventive measures may include introduction of public awareness
programmes through the media, the education system and public announcements
to entrench the concept of gender equality in society. Gender sensitization
training to law enforcement and judicial personnel also needs tobe provided
to enable them to impartially address the cases of honour killings. Reliable
data and research is essential to ensure that the nature of the problem is
made visible in our society.
Reported cases of honour killings are only the tip of the iceberg in
depicting the agony of domestic violence facing women in Pakistan. They are
beaten, amputated, burnt, raped, socially isolated and terrorized in a
variety of ways. There is an urgent need to take care of the problem
systematically at a much larger scale, rather than off-again on-again
fragmented efforts.
Courtesy:
http://dawn.com |
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