Harassment is given to a woman as a national birth right in Pakistan
ISLAMABAD: Being born a woman in Pakistan is a crime and leading a life of a single, working parent is an even bigger offence. Harassment is given to a woman as a national birth right in Pakistan. Every day we read articles about sexual harassment and harassment of women in general but we pass it off as a common occurrence or an ‘exaggeration’ labelled as ‘feminazis trying to create a scene’, and those who should read it are too busy groping and manhandling women.
Nineteen years ago, my mother brought me to Pakistan, thinking she would be able to give me a better environment to grow up in. But she was wrong. For 19 years I have been living in constant torture at the hands of corrupt bureaucrats. It started with them turning up at our front door late nights asking for ‘favours’ and when rejected, they punished my mother by ruining her life and career, withholding her promotions, constantly transferring her to different departments and creating a hostile work environment. When that wasn’t enough to satisfy and feed their male egos, the harassment followed her home.
Punctured tyres, broken doors and windows, car thefts, physical assaults, open life threats, I could keep on listing the heinous crimes they committed. They hurl stones and bricks at us whenever we enter the vicinity and harangue us on the streets on a daily basis. We have been tortured, traumatised and denied our basic human rights. Our water supply has been cut off for almost 15 days now and a mob gathers around our front door as soon as we step out to get some help. The PWD and the Housing Ministry feign ignorance and are mere puppets being controlled by these men residing in Gulshan-e-Jinnah, F-5/1.
Numerous applications to the ministries and to the police have turned out to be useless, as the men in charge of implementing law and order are the ones disrupting it in the first place. Where would you go if you want to report the very person in-charge of reading the reports? I have been forced to write this open letter as a cry for help, since we have left no stone unturned and are unsure of our fate being left in the hands of these barbaric savages serving the government by day and scheming against a single woman by night.
Quaid-e-Azam did not create Pakistan so that the women could be treated the same way as they were in the subcontinent.
Kainat Ahmed
Published in The Express Tribune, May 2nd, 2017.
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