Pakistan: no 'honour' in these killings of women - Reports from: Asia and Pacific - reprinted from 'NEWSHEET' - Reprint

WIN News, Summer, 2003

FROM 'NEWSHEET', SHIRKAT GAH, WOMEN'S RESOURCE CENTRE P.O. Box 5192, Lahore, PAKISTAN

"The Shirkat Gah report on 'honour killings' is about Pakistan. But there are many parallels in India too. It implies that we need to eliminate the murderers, and not the women.

In the name of religion, men with beards are getting elected--in India and Pakistan ... Indeed, if one was to look for a pattern in the subcontinent, the results of the recent elections in Pakistan suggest that the trend is veering towards this particular combination of religion and politics. Should we be worried? As women, we certainly do. Pakistanis have lived through many political upheavals but in successive elections, the Islamic fundamentalists have never won more than five percent of the votes.

This time things have changed, particularly in the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) and Baluchistan where a coalition of six religious parties has shown a dramatically improved showing at the polls ... Despite years of military dictatorship and many draconian laws, women in Pakistan have fought bravely against unjust laws and customs that perpetuate and institutionalise gender violence.

They have demonstrated, they have documented atrocities against women and they have lobbied for change. But the early signals of the impending assault on women's rights in the provinces is dominant and can already be seen. According to Khawar Mumfaz of Shirkat Gah, a leading women's organisation in Pakistan, the pro-Taliban fundamentalists groups in the NWFP began targetting organisations working with women.

At one point, eight offices of NGOs, many of them working in the areas of health and education of women, were attacked and razed to the ground. The homes of the directors of these organisations were also attacked. And later, targetted killings and bomb blasts continued.

But it is not just the NWFP or Baluchistan where women face violence of an unprecedented nature. In the name of religion and tradition, almost one woman a day is being killed in the province of Sindh.

According to a report prepared by Shirkat Gah, The Dark Side of 'Honour'--Women Victims in Pakistan, out of 5,000 'honour' killings worldwide in the year 2000, around 1,000 took place in Pakistan. 'Honour' killings are another term for murdering women for the flimsiest of reasons--from suspected infidelity to wanting a divorce. The term 'honour' killing became better known when a middle-class woman was shot dead in Lahore on April 6, 1999. The case of 29-year-old Samia Sarwar drew considerable media attention worldwide. Daughter of a medical doctor and a prominent businessman, Samia, who was studying law, wanted to divorce her abusive husband. She agreed to meet her mother in her lawyer's office on that fateful day.

Instead of getting a chance to speak to her mother, she was shot dead by a stranger who accompanied her mother. Although the link between the killer and Samia's father was established, no action has been taken against her parents. The Chamber of Commerce and several religious organisations are supporting him. Samia was killed because apparently she sullied the family's 'honour' by asking for a divorce.

Women in the villages of Pakistan are killed for no reason at all. The Shirkat Gah report brings out the nature of 'honour' killings and the distortions that have occurred to this custom. It shows how modern-day politics uses and even reinforces ancient customs that commodify women and distort religion.

In Sindh, Baluchistan and southern Punjab, 'honour' killings are only one end of a spectrum of specific and gendered violence of which the only and exclusive victims are women. Their stories in the report are narrated with stark simplicity ... all of them are victims of 'honour' killings. They were all accused, without any proof, of having had illicit relations. The most heart wrenching of these stories is that of the 12-year-old who was bartered away by her father in exchange for a woman to marry his son.

This woman's brother insisted on marrying the child. When the village mullah hesitated at performing the ceremony for such a young girl, the bridegroom put a gun to his head--the marriage was performed. But that very night, the bridegroom pumped five bullets into his young bride, claiming she said she had sex with her cousin.

There are two things stand out in the report. One, that the 'Hadoood laws' brought in during Zia ul-Haq's regime gave legal sanction to the belief that a woman deserves to die if she was unfaithful. The burden of proof is entirely on her.

The Shirkat Gah report writes: 'These laws, based on the most regressive interpretation of Islam, have served to confirm the inferior status of women in a deeply misogynist society and, provide official sanction of their oppression. As a result, 'honour' killings, which were confined to tribal areas, have now moved into cities ..."