An Interview With: Shahnaz Bokhari: Pakistani Activist Against Violence Against Women

Off Our Backs, Mar/Apr 2004 by Mantilla, Karla, Osborn, Corie

Shahnaz Bokhari is the founder of the Progressive Women's Association (PWA) in Pakistan and has been helping women victims of social and domestic violence who have been subjected to rape, incest, burning by fire or acid, battering and karo kari (honor killings) since 1986. She has done this mostly out of her own home in Islamabad. In 1999 she converted her family home in Rawalpindi into Pakistan's first shelter home.

Bokhari was arrested and charged with "abetting adultery" in 2000 by the former husband of a female victim who left the shelter unaccompanied by a male relative. She was acquitted of the charges in February 2003. Following are excerpts from an interview that off our backs collective member Karla Mantilla and intern Corie Osborn conducted with Bokhari this past October.

oob: How did you get started doing this kind of work?

Bokhari: I started working on women's rights in 1986, after observing how 90 percent of the female population is deprived of even the most basic human rights. I met women who had been thrown out of their house by their husbands or families and deprived of basic livelihood and survival. Often their children were snatched away, and in the cases where the women retained their children, the children were also deprived of food and shelter. In Pakistan, 95 percent of women are illiterate and unskilled, so when these things happen, they are in danger of starving to death.

Working on a case-by-case basis, we have followed 15,000 cases since 1987. We work at the grassroots level, individually guiding those women in desperate need of assistance, by providing practical assistance in police stations, the court system and medical intervention to victims of violence.

oob: When did you become more involved with issues of violence against women?

Bokhari: In March of 1994, I started taking on cases where women's noses or hands were chopped off, bones were broken, or they were burnt by acid or kerosene oil. The first case of critical physical violence in which I became involved was that of a woman named Zainab. Her husband-who was a religious priest and preached in the mosque five times a day-inserted an iron rod in her private parts and passed an electrical current through it. The current left her almost dead.

We went to the hospital and saw her, and I fainted when I saw her for the first time. We followed it through all the courts of Pakistan and got her husband convicted for thirty-one years. But-there is a very big but to it: the highest court slashed his punishment so that he was to serve only ten years. Then he was pardoned by the thenpresident of Pakistan so that last year he got out of jail! We stood on the streets demanding and demonstrating but he was still released.

Over the years I have begged my friends and philanthropists for help. I have begged my doctor friends to take care of certain cases and my lawyer friends to follow these cases in the courts and the justice system. Thanks to all of them and the media for addressing the issue, today violence against women is one of the major issues of the country.

oob: And your organization is all volunteer?

Bokhari: It is all volunteer.

oob: How do people respond to you in Pakistan?

Bokhari: Twenty years back it was very difficult. People always wanted to know: Why am I interested? Am I related to the woman? Why am I bothered?

There were different reactions to my commitment to the women in our society. Some thought I was washing the dirty linens in public, first in the national media and now in front of the international media. They said, "She's bringing all of our bad issues out internationally and she's bringing shame to Pakistan. She's saying that the men are beasts in this country."

I replied, "Yes, I'm highlighting the violence men have committed. I'm showing the women whom you have struck and the women whom you have burnt with acid in front of the media! But tell me, what have you done? Have you passed some sort of legislation? Have you made some sort of burn center? No, there are no burn centers, there are no women's support centers! There is no legal status for women!"

Then there is the class of fundamentalists who say I am destroying the family and cultural traditions-that we are just westernized women and that we have vested interests. I keep asking them what my vested interests would be! After 18 years, I am still working at my own dining room table!

oob: Have you received any recognition for your work?

Bokhari: I have been well-honored in the international community. I have been featured in documentaries by National Geographic and the BBC, MBC, Al-jazeera TV, CNN, and on Australian and Dutch TV.

I have been lucky to receive so much attention from the media. They have accompanied me on visits to burned women in the hospitals. We have always been in the press, highlighting the issues of violence-how the women were burned and what happened to them afterwards. There is persistent follow-up for each case, because if one day the case is in the media and the second day it's not, you lose the interest of the people. We've been keeping up political pressure through the help of the media and the readers, but to keep their interest alive in violence cases, this constant follow up is desperately required.