The fight against rape

Although the new rape bill approved by Senate is a welcome development, there is still much room for adding to the law

There have been zero celebrations in Pakistan on the historic new rape bill approved by the Senate earlier this week. And understandably so. For how does a society, which largely regards rape as harmless merrymaking, celebrate the heavy and costly engagement of the judicial apparatus against it. The new bill, however, brings good news for those in Pakistan who have somehow managed to think from outside the overwhelmingly male intellectual space subscribed to by most of the population. And also for those who are sensitive enough to realise that rape is not a crime which is ‘equal’ in nature, but one which inflicts a special disadvantage on one gender. On February 20, the Anti-Rape Laws (Criminal Amendment) Bill of 2013 sailed through the Senate, tightening checks on medico-legal officers who dilly-dally on bodily examinations and on journalists who report rape in ways that stigmatise rape survivors, discouraging them from seeking justice against the crime. Thanks to the new bill, it is not just the rapist who will be punished now, but also those who hinder prosecution, shame the survivor and trivialise the crime — those doing all they can to cement a stifling status quo which sympathises with the culprit who, statistically speaking, is almost always male.



That most Pakistani newspapers did not carry this story clearly indicates the priority that much of the media places on such important issues. However, the lawmakers’ commitment to passing this important legislation is pleasantly surprising; it makes one hope that new sensibilities will fan out across all state institutions in due time, and also that the bill will be passed by the National Assembly with similar ease. That the very legislature,one of whose female members till some weeks ago had deemed rape to be a ‘smaller’ offence, is now clamping down hard indicates that the sands are indeed shifting. Harsher checks on hostile medico-legal officers recorded in the bill are completely unprecedented in nature and convey a strong and sensitive grasp on the emotional and biological difficulties of reporting rape. Many rape survivors are known to be shamed and doubted by hospital staff for being unable to prove it physically. This loss of evidence is often a direct result of delays caused by the fear of social ostracisation, or the laziness on the part of medico-legal staff, who are quick to confuse their own shortcomings with a rape survivor’s morality. It is a little-known fact in our part of the world that most physical evidence of rape is quite fleeting. Biology doesn’t quite coordinate with the mood swings of sluggish government officials. Moreover, one wishes that the naming of rape survivors in the local press did not jeopardise their reputations, but sadly, such a sensibility is lost on a society which shifts the onus of crime on the person against whom it was committed. Till our tenacious social constitution braves a particularly snail-paced process of evolution, any intelligent, short-term measure that empowers rape survivors, is more than welcome.

While there is no doubt that legislative movement forward on this front makes for a telling paradigm shift in Pakistan’s overall gender consciousness, there is still much room for adding to the law. For instance, it fails to regulate the unwelcome treatment that a rape survivor receives at the local thana, the gate-keeper of the justice system. Reports in the local press have pointed out glaring discrepancies between rapes reported at hospitals and rapes reported at police stations — the former exceeding the latter in number. It doesn’t take a legal expert to realise that an average thana, often already embroiled in corruption, mismanagement and politicisation, is peopled largely by officials who speak in the idioms of pure misogyny and consider the reporting of rape by a woman to be far more shameful than the committing of rape by a man.

Secondly, the language of the legislation is loaded with a value judgment, which does a tacit disservice to those who have faced rape. It should always be ‘rape survivor’, instead of ‘rape victim’ — for the latter indicates a position of weakness, which should only be bequeathed to the rapist. Language is important, for it frames the mental constructs which subconsciously affect our verdicts.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 24^th,  2015.

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