Crime Or Custom? Violence Against Women In Pakistan

WIN News, Wntr, 2000

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CONTENTS:

Summary // Recommendations // Background // Pakistan's Obligations under International Law // The Scope of the Problem of Violence Against Women // The State Response to Violence Against Women: Domestic Law / Gender Bias in the Criminal Justice System / Role of the Police / Medicolegal Examinations / Role of the Office of the Chemical Examiner / Use of Medical Evidence at Trial / The Response of the International Community // Conclusions.

FROM THE SUMMARY:

On April 6, 1999, twenty-seven-year-old Samia Sarwar was gunned down in her attorneys' office in Lahore by a hit man retained by her family. Her mother, father and paternal uncle were all accomplices to her murder. Ms. Sarwar was killed because she was seeking a divorce from her estranged husband - an action her family deemed 'dishonorable' and, hence, warranting death...

Ms. Sarwar's transgression, in the eyes of her family, was seeking a divorce; other women are attacked, by or at the instigation of family members, for choosing their spouses. In addition, countless women suffer from battery, rape, burning, acid attacks and mutilation. Estimates of the percentage of women who experience spousal abuse alone range from 70 to upwards of 90 percent. If there is anything more disturbing than the prevalence of these crimes, it is the impunity with which they are committed. Samia Sarwar's case is an example not only of the violence experienced by Pakistani women but also of the lack of governmental will to do anything about it... Of 215 cases of women being suspiciously burned to death in their Lahore homes in 1997, in only six cases were suspects even taken into custody.

Women in Pakistan face staggeringly high rates of rape, sexual assault, and domestic violence while their attackers largely go unpunished owing to rampant incompetence, corruption, and biases against women throughout the criminal justice system... Women who file rape charges open themselves up to the possibility of being prosecuted for illicit sex if they fail to 'prove' rape under the 1979 Hudood Ordinances, which criminalize adultery and fornication. As a result, when women victims of violence resort to the judicial system for redress, they are more likely to find further abuse and victimization.

Women victims of domestic violence encounter even higher levels of unresponsiveness and hostility, as actors at all levels of the criminal justice system typically view domestic violence as a private matter that does not belong in the courts... When asked about the domestic violence victims who have been examined at his office, the head medicolegal doctor for Karachi explained that '25 percent of such women come with self-inflicted wounds.'

Human Rights Watch has investigated the Pakistan government's response to the pervasive problem of violence against women in the country's two largest cities, Karachi and Lahore. Despite the severity of the problem, the government's response has been indifferent at best. At worst it has served to exacerbate the suffering of women victims of violence and to obstruct the course of justice...

In the course of our investigation, we interviewed human rights lawyers and activists, police officials, medicolegal doctors, the personnel of government forensic laboratories, prosecutors, judges and women victims of violence who had attempted to navigate the criminal justice system in order to obtain redress... We found that, with the exception of the rare high-profile incident, domestic violence cases were virtually never investigated or prosecuted. In fact, Pakistani law fails to criminalize a common and serious form of domestic violence: marital rape. Even complaints regarding acts of domestic violence that fall within the ambit of the criminal law, such as assault or attempted murder, are routinely ignored or downplayed by the police[ldots]

A stark example of the serious flaws in the applicable legislation is the fact that the very filing of rape charges can make the victim vulnerable to prosecution for extramarital sex. In some instances victims of rape and sexual abuse have actually been detained for months or even years, prior to trial, on charges of illicit sexual intercourse. Since statutory rape is not a crime in Pakistan, even barely pubescent girls alleging rape risk being charged with fornication or consensual sex outside of marriage[ldots]